The Centre for British Progress is inviting proposals for our fast grants programme. We will make small, fast grants for original research and policy work on British growth and progress. Decisions are made within two weeks of submission. You do not need an academic affiliation or formal institutional role to apply.
The fast grants model was pioneered during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen launched Fast Grants in March 2020 to fund scientists within days rather than months. Emergent Ventures extends the same logic to fund individuals with unconventional ideas. CBP's programme applies this model to UK growth and progress policy.
What we fund
We welcome proposals across a range of outputs, including:
- Research and analysis: written work that builds the evidence base (comparative international studies, empirical research, economic models, data analysis)
- Policy proposals: concrete, actionable plans for government policy
- Opinion and primary research: work that generates new data about what people think or know (polling, focus groups, expert interviews)
- Campaigns: public communications designed to advance a specific policy case
- Tools and infrastructure: datasets, calculators, websites, or other resources that others can use and build on
We are particularly interested in proposals on the following themes. We also warmly welcome strong proposals on other topics related to UK growth and progress.
- The UK attracts frontier firms in AI, defence tech, computational biology, space, and robotics, but often loses them as they scale, often to the US. What determines where these industries ultimately cluster, and what would it take to change a founder's decision to stay?
- The UK is one of the most centralised large economies in the developed world, and many argue this starves regions of the resources and accountability that drive growth. Where is centralisation damaging, and what does the international record tell us about which forms of devolution succeed?
- According to Tyler Goodspeed, Europe's dependence on bank finance combined with the Basel III regulations explains the post-2010 divergence between Europe and the US. How can these regulations be rolled back or improved to promote growth without violating international treaties or risking a new banking collapse?
- A typical UK pension-holder retires with a materially smaller pot than an equivalent Canadian, Australian, or Dutch saver, and some point to regulatory caution around trustee mandates as a leading explanation. How much is this conservatism actually costing UK pension-holders, and what would have to change for them to capture the returns their international peers earn?
- Research on agglomeration (Moretti, Duranton, and others) shows large and compounding returns to innovation and growth when high-skill firms and workers cluster together – yet the UK's strongest hubs remain constrained. The Government has committed to supporting the Oxford–Cambridge corridor, growth zones and wider planning reform. How do we turn those commitments into the density and connectivity clusters needed to realise their potential?
- Britain's energy costs are among the highest in the developed world, and this is widely treated as a limitation on growth and reindustrialisation. But how much does the price of energy actually matter to an advanced, services-based economy, and which of the proposed routes to bring it down would deliver the most?
- Much of AI's economic value, and much of its social disruption, will come not from the frontier labs but from diffusion – as firms adopt AI to do work once done by people, or work that was never done at all. What are the main barriers (practical, political and legal) slowing that diffusion in the UK, and what would it take to manage the transition in a way that is both sustainable and popular?
How to apply
Please submit the application form. We are considering applications weekly on a rolling basis.