Since 2016, our Innovate UK Women in Innovation programme has played a vital role in strengthening the UK’s innovation system. We’ve worked hard to develop this unique programme, and we care about its success deeply.

For this year’s Women in Innovation awards, we said that we’d fund a portfolio of up to 50 projects. Last week, we communicated that 25 applicants had been successful for funding.

As public funders, we must manage our budgets carefully. The decision to only award this number was a mistake and we prioritised wrongly.

We recognise the impact this has had on the many applicants, and on the community as a whole, and we apologise wholeheartedly.

We confirm we will be funding a total of 50 awards. This represents a total investment of £4m for the current cohort, as originally committed.

As well as confirming 50 awards, we also want to reassure everyone who applied that we remain committed to supporting and increasing opportunities across the system for women innovators.

We will be contacting all applicants to highlight how they can access support from Innovate UK and our partners.

The response to this programme has been our highest to date, and demonstrates the increasing number of women-led innovative businesses that are driving growth for our economy.

Women in Innovation is one of the programmes that we offer across the Innovate UK system, which includes the Innovate UK Catapult Network, business growth advisors and Innovate UK Business Connect.

Across this system we offer many products and services to support innovation.

Latest data for all Innovate UK competitions, shows that 1 in 3 successful grant applications were led by women, up from 1 in 7 in 2016.

We apologise again for the concern and frustration that we have caused.

We will:

- Fund 50 Women in Innovation awards, meeting our original commitment of £4m for this programme.

- Contact the additional 25 successful applicants to confirm funding, starting immediately.

- Contact all Women in Innovation applicants with information of other types of support available to them.

- Further develop our strategic engagement with business leaders and advocates in this area. We have already been speaking with people who have been engaging on behalf of communities.

- Continue to work collaboratively to improve our processes and co-create new opportunities.