Diabetes UK is committed to funding new research that has the potential to improve the lives of people living with diabetes. This year, despite the harsh economic climate, we have made new awards through all of our funding routes: PhD Studentships, Basic and Clinical Fellowships, Small grants, Equipment grants and Project grants in addition to maintaining a portfolio of existing research grants representing a total value of awards of around £20 million.

The charity's income in the latter part of 2009 is not expected to be as high as planned and we are taking a pragmatic and realistic view of the economic situation in making plans for 2010. To this end, we have decided to hold one grant round next year rather than the two that we would normally run. No other funding scheme is affected. We appreciate that many of you will have planned to submit applications on the 1 June deadline (for an October decision) which will not now take place. We have therefore decided to delay the next closing date from 1 December 2009 to 1 February 2010 to enable applications to be submitted for consideration in 2010. We still intend to reach funding decisions for all applicants no later than mid-June 2010.

The 1 December 2010 closing date for decisions in May 2011 remains unchanged.

We appreciate that this is not ideal but have taken this difficult decision in order that we can manage our budget to enable us to continue funding new research and honour our commitments to existing awards.