Evaluation Accelerator Fund
The Evaluation Accelerator Fund (EAF) supports evaluation across government to transform our understanding of the impact of activity in priority policy areas.
Documents
Details
Application for Phase 3 Funding is now open.
The deadline is 6:00pm on Monday, 31 July 2023.
FundingLaunch Application:of Phase 32 funding
The fund has a total value of £15£15m, million, most of which £12.2m was allocated through thePhase first1 two rounds of funding.the programme. The remaining £1.25£2.8m million of funding willfor be allocated to projects beginning in April 20242023 will be allocated through a thirdsecond bidding process.
Please find further details of how to apply for Phase 32 funding in the documents attached above.
Details of Phase 1 funding
The EvaluationEAF Accelerator Fund provides a total of £15£15m million of funding across the 2022/23, 2023/24, and 2024/25 financial years to improve our understanding of “what works”.
The key aims of the fund are to:
- accelerate evaluation activity and the creation of actionable evidence in HMG priority areas to inform decision-making at the next spending review
- tackle evidence gaps in HMG priority areas by rapidly building the evidence base where departments and What Works Centres are not currently undertaking activity
- provide robust evidence of financial or efficiency savings from new policies and interventions, or innovative approaches to service delivery
The Evaluation Task Force and the Cabinet Office announced the first wave of successful projects on Tuesday,Tuesday 22nd August 2022. The 16 selected programmes will receive a combined £12.2£12.2m million to deliver hightop-quality qualityevaluation evaluationsactivity in key policy areas, which supports a key commitment of the Government reform agenda to deliver better for citizens.
Selected Aprojects furtherare fourled projectsby werea range of government departments and What Works Centres. They will help fill evidence gaps across high-priority areas including crime and justice, education, social care, and health.
The first wave of selected forprojects is listed below. A more detailed table summarising the cost of each bid, including matched funding contributions, is attached above.
Phase 1 selected projects
Tackling drug misuse in waveprisons
Lead twoorganisation(s): The Ministry of theJustice EAF,and withHer successfulMajesty’s bidsPrison announced& onProbation 6thService
This Marchproject 2023will fill an important evidence gap in assessing the impact of drug testing in prisons by Ministertesting Alexthe Burghartfeasibility atof wastewater-based surveillance (WBS) in prisons, before running randomised control trials to assess the Creatingmost Bettercost-effective method(s) to identify/deter drug misuse and to support prisoners to live a drug-free life.
Using linked justice system administrative data for quasi-experimental evaluations
Lead organisation(s): The Ministry of Justice and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
The Ministry of Justice and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) will use data to explore individuals’ interactions across justice services (courts, prison, and probation) over time, and assess how policy changes impacted issues such as reoffending.
Police Drug Diversion (PDD): A realist impact, process and economic evaluation
Lead organisation(s): The College of Policing
Current police drug diversion (PDD) schemes will be tested to assess their impact and establish how to reduce costs and maximise benefits when policing low-level drug offenders. The project will evaluate the effects of PDD on crime, health and other outcomes.
Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Evidence Building Fund
Lead organisation(s): The College of Policing
The College of Policing will work with the National Police Chiefs Council and the Home Office to identify promising interventions aimed at tackling violence against women and girls. The most promising interventions will then be robustly tested through experimental methods.
Reducing youth reoffending in GovernmentLondon event.with tailored Youth Offending Service (YOS) support
Lead organisation(s): The College of Policing
EAFThe supportedCollege projectsof Policing and The Met Police will test how to support children at risk of reoffending who currently receive “No Further Action” (released without charge) at their second arrest including testing the impact of extending non-statutory Youth Offending Service support.
Healthy and sustainable diets programme
Lead organisation(s): The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
5 government departments including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Food Standards Agency, Department of Health and Social Care, Department for Education, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and Economic and Social Research Council, will test how effective interventions such as dietary information campaigns, community food networks and cost/content of food are ledat encouraging and enabling healthier and more sustainable diets for all.
An Economic and Impact Evaluation of the Effectiveness and Scalability of Local Pathfinders to Reduce Child Poverty
Lead organisation(s): The Scottish Government
The Scottish Government will test pathfinder programmes which provide holistic support to help families at risk of poverty. Small-scale studies will be run initially, meaning they can be tested to find what works before policies are scaled up any further.
What works for Kinship care and Special Guardianship Orders?
Lead organisation(s): What Works for Children’s Social Care
What Works for Children’s Social Care will work with local authorities to understand how their interventions impact their ability to attract and provide support to Kinship Foster Carers and Special Guardians.
Evaluation of Staying Close
Lead organisation(s):What Works for Children’s Social Care
What Works for Children’s Social Care undertake an evaluation of the impact of the national rollout of “Staying Close”. The programme was set up to help young people leaving residential care by continuing to provide support and helping them find nearby accommodation.
Cash transfers for care leavers
Lead organisation(s): The Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI)
The Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) will evaluate the impact of providing a rangeone-off cash transfer to young people leaving care. Through this, CHI hopes to reduce the high rates of homelessness in this group and track longer-term impacts on health, employment and wellbeing.
Evaluating Interventions to Reduce Homelessness Among Care Leavers
Lead organisation(s): The Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI)
The Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) will identify how initiatives from central or local government such as Staying Put, which allows young people leaving care to remain in close contact with their foster carers (in many cases continuing to live with them) reduce the risk of homelessness.
Supporting children and families affected by domestic abuse in early help and Children’s Social Care
Lead organisation(s): The Early Intervention Foundation
An evaluation of government policies which aim to support children and families either experiencing or at risk of domestic abuse. The Early Intervention Foundation will use this work to build on evidence collected by the Department for Education to help understand how best to support vulnerable children.
Pupil Premium Evaluation
Lead organisation(s): The Department for Education
Pupil Premium, a programme of targeted funding to improve educational attainment for disadvantaged children, costs around £2.5bn per year, but this work will robustly evaluate how PP narrows the difference in attainment between disadvantaged and other pupils.
Education Endowment Foundation archive accelerator
Lead organisation(s): Education Endowment Foundation
Funding will create a world-leading resource for policy evaluation in education by improving access to Education Endowment Foundation data from 118 tests involving 1.7m pupils to other Government departments and What Works Centres.
Cohorts and Experiments Project
Lead organisation(s): The Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI)
This project will work with five What Works Centres. Theyto willdeliver helpthree fillstudies evidenceusing gapscohort acrossstudy high-prioritydata areasto includingexplore crimethe impacts of interventions on shared outcomes such as education and justice,employment, education,engagement socialwith care,the criminal justice system, homelessness and mental health.
Developing useful parameters, learning and outcomes
DetailsLead aboutorganisation(s): selectedThe projects,Centre includingfor Homelessness Impact (CHI)
Led by the costCentre for Homelessness Impact (CHI), this proposal will develop and test infrastructure and building blocks for Departments and What Works Centres to improve the quality and breadth of eachcausal bid,evaluation in priority policy areas. Six cutting-edge evaluations will be delivered as part of the programme in priority policy areas.
How were the bids selected?
Bids to the EAF were invited from departments and What Works Centres in areas aligned with the Prime Minister’s core missions. To encourage the best bids, and maximise the impact of the fund, the ETF undertook extensive engagement with departments. The fund is focused on supporting high-quality evaluation approaches using robust methodologies such as randomised control trials and quasi-experiments.
In total, 46 bids were received: 27 from government departments and 19 from What Works Centres. These 46 bids requested £26.6m of funding, with £9.3m matched funding contributions,pledged.
All bids were triaged to check for eligibility and intendedthen outputsdouble-scored areby availablethe ETF. Consensus meetings were held to discuss discrepancies in scoring, ensure consistency in our assessment practices, and agree on an overall RAG rating for each bid. A long list of potential projects was then shared with colleagues in HM Treasury, and with the linkedETF documentsOversight above.Board for further feedback.
Further updates on the funded projects will be made available on this page.
Please direct any queries in the meantime to our dedicated mailbox - eaf@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
Last updated 20
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Evaluation Accelerator Fund Phase 2 selected projects have been added to the page. Phase 3 funding application is now open.
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Information about applying for EAF Phase 2 funding has been added.
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All the partners for the "Healthy and sustainable diets programme" have been listed
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Updated with information on the successful bids receiving funding from the Evaluation Accelerator Fund.
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First published.
Update history
2026-05-29 09:00
Updated the entire page and added the following documents:Evaluation Accelerator Fund Phase 5 – VAWG open competition – Guidance for bidders Evaluation Accelerator Fund Phase 5 – GENERAL Competition – Guidance EAF Phase 5 – VAWG open competition – proposal template EAF Phase 5 – GENERAL competition – proposal templateEAF Phase 5 – Financial case template – both strands EAF Phase 4 Selected Projects
2025-03-07 10:52
Information about applying for EAF Phase 4 funding has been added.
2024-03-25 10:45
We removed information on applying for Phase 3 funding as the deadline is over.
2023-08-23 09:43
Updating that the applications are now closed
2023-07-24 15:28
The deadline for EAF phase 3 has been extended to the 18th August 2023, 6pm.
2023-06-20 16:28
Evaluation Accelerator Fund Phase 2 selected projects have been added to the page.Phase 3 funding application is now open.
2022-10-06 09:09
Information about applying for EAF Phase 2 funding has been added.
2022-08-15 16:24
All the partners for the “Healthy and sustainable diets programme” have been listed
2022-08-02 13:23
Updated with information on the successful bids receiving funding from the Evaluation Accelerator Fund.