FOI2026/00830: CAM Pathfinder competition assessment principles and practice
Case reference FOI2026/00830
Received 15 September 2026
Published 12 October 2026
Request
Request received: 15 September 2026
I request clarity concerning some of the principles used in the assessment of applications to the recent CAM Pathfinder: Enable and CAM Pathfinder: Demonstrate competitions. They seem to differ from those of other Innovate UK competitions, with some aspects not aligning with best practice recommendations in GovS 015.
Questions
1. For each of these competitions, please provide the following information:
a) number of applications submitted. How many passed the written assessment stage?
b) the interview score of the highest and lowest scoring applications that were funded
c) the interview score of the highest and lowest scoring applications that were not funded
2. The Enable competition stated "UK Government will invest up to £15 million to fund up to six projects from this competition. This is subject to a sufficient number of high quality applications being received."
a) how many projects were funded from this competition?
b) what was the total grant value of projects funded?
c) from the interview stage, how many applications were considered to be of sufficiently high quality to be funded?
3. The Demonstrate competition stated "UK Government will invest up to £20 million to fund up to fifteen projects from this competition. This is subject to a sufficient number of high quality applications being received."
Please respond to the same three questions as in 2 above.
4. Was a 'top-down' approach used for selection within these two competitions? Or were portfolio criteria used? If the latter, please say what those criteria were and how they were made known to applicants.
5. Government Functional Standard GovS015, Section 5: Competition for Funding Para 30 states: "It is best practice to add weightings to the assessment criteria, as part of the details of the scheme, to signal their relative importance and help applicants to focus their efforts appropriately."
For some competitions, Innovate UK provides links to assessor guidance criteria, but with no explanation of the weightings that will be used.
However, for the two competitions under discussion, neither assessor guidance criteria nor explanation of any weightings were evident. I am concerned by this apparent lack of consistency and transparency.
Perhaps there are good reasons why IUK did not follow best practice recommendations for the CAM Pathfinder: Enable and Demonstrate competitions, but I believe it is in the public interest to know what these reasons were.
Does Innovate UK intend to comply fully and consistently with the recommendations of GovS015 Section 5 Para 30? If so, please indicate a time-scale for this to be implemented.
Response
Response sent: 12 October 2026
Full details of this response are available in the attached document.
Documents
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