HMRC publishes annual statistics on R&D tax relief: a count of who claims, how much they claim and how that is changing, drawn from the claims HMRC itself processes. This page explains what the series measures, sets out the trend lines that matter, and records what the most recent release showed. Each new release is read here as it lands.
What the statistics measure
Each release counts claims made under the R&D reliefs for a single tax year, the total relief claimed against them, and the qualifying R&D expenditure behind them. Those totals are then split by scheme, by sector and by the region in which the claimant company is registered. HMRC notes that a registered office is not necessarily where the R&D happens, which matters when the regional table is used as a map of UK research activity.
The figures lag. Each release covers a year that closed well before publication: the September 2025 release covered 2023-24. A release therefore describes the rules as they stood two policy cycles ago, not the rules a company is claiming under today.
One number people expect to find in the statistics is not in them. HMRC’s estimates of error and fraud in the R&D reliefs are published separately, in its approach-to-R&D-reliefs papers and its annual report and accounts. Both sources are linked at the foot of this page.
The headline series
Two movements run through the recent data, and they point in opposite directions.
Participation fell sharply. Claims fell 26% to 46,950 in 2023-24. SME claims fell around 31% while RDEC claims fell only about 5%, so the exit was concentrated among smaller and first-time claimants, the group most exposed to the new compliance load and the reduced SME rates. Claims below £15,000 largely disappeared from the data.
Underlying R&D spend did not. Qualifying R&D expenditure was £46.1bn, down 1%, and total relief held broadly steady at about £7.6 billion. The contrast between a 26% fall in claims and a 1% fall in underlying expenditure is the story of the report: R&D activity held steady while participation dropped sharply. Because the small claims left and the spend stayed, average claim value rose by around a third.
Error and fraud fell hard. HMRC’s estimate of error and fraud in the relief fell from 17.6% in 2021-22 to a measured 6.4% in 2023-24, and its July 2026 annual report estimates 5.3% for the two years since. That trajectory is the clearest evidence that the compliance campaign is doing what it was designed to do, and it is the main reason the campaign will not be relaxed.
Read together: the compliance era is squeezing out weak claims while leaving genuine R&D spend intact. For a company doing real qualifying work, the numbers are reassurance, not warning. But they also describe an environment where HMRC checked around one in six claims in 2023-24, so the cost of a poorly prepared submission has never been higher; our guide to HMRC enquiries explains what that scrutiny looks like in practice.
What the 2025 release showed
The September 2025 release, covering 2023-24, is the most recent. It is also the first to reflect the April 2023 reforms: the rebalanced SME and RDEC rates, the intensive rate for R&D-heavy SMEs and the mandatory Additional Information Form from August 2023.
| Measure (2023-24) | Movement on prior year |
|---|---|
| Number of claims | 46,950, down 26% |
| Total relief claimed | About £7.6bn, down about 2% |
| Average claim value | Up by about a third |
| Qualifying R&D expenditure | £46.1bn, down 1% |
2023-24 is also the first year RDEC exceeded the SME scheme by value: £4.41bn against £3.15bn, a 36% rise against a 29% fall. Rate changes explain much of it, alongside SMEs claiming under RDEC because of grant funding or subcontracting positions under the old rules.
Where the relief goes
Where it always has. Companies registered in London took around 24% of claims and 31% of value, the South East 15% and 20%. Three sectors, Information and Communication, Manufacturing, and Professional, Scientific and Technical, accounted for 72% of claims and 71% of support. For research-heavy fields like life sciences, the concentration is unsurprising: that is where the qualifying work is easiest to identify and evidence.
What to watch in the next release
The 2025 release was the last one built around the SME-versus-large split. From April 2024 the merged scheme covers all companies, and future releases will instead compare R&D-intensive SMEs claiming ERIS against everyone else. The interesting dividing line stops being company size and becomes R&D intensity.
Three things to look for when the 2026 release lands:
- The first merged scheme and ERIS figures. How the claimant population divides on intensity rather than size, now that the old split has gone.
- Whether smaller genuine claimants return. The sharp fall in sub-£15,000 claims mixed companies that should never have claimed with companies that could have. Only a recovery in volumes without a rise in error and fraud would tell the two apart.
- Whether average claim value holds. A third increase came from the bottom of the distribution emptying. Whether that level persists shows if the shift is structural or a one-year effect.
We will analyse the release here when it lands. Until then, if you want to understand where your company sits in the current system, start with which R&D scheme applies to you, check the rates for your period, or talk it through with a chartered adviser.
Sources
- R&D tax credits statistics, September 2025 — claim numbers, total support and the sector and regional splits.
- HMRC’s approach to R&D tax reliefs 2023–24 — 17% of claims checked, 500-plus compliance staff and estimated error and fraud of 17.6%.
- HMRC annual report and accounts 2025–26 — error and fraud measured at 6.4% for 2023-24, with 5.3% estimated for the two years since.