Costs of seeking ethics approval before and after the introduction of multicentre research ethics committees

With the advent of multicentre research ethics committees in the UK, local research ethics committees (LRECs) are required to advise only on issues re lating to the local acceptability of a project. We looked at the handling o f two commercially sponsored studies, one initiated before the change and o ne after, confining the analysis to 21 LRECs approached in both. As judged by the amount of paper per application, the new system for LRECs is simpler and should be less costly. However, there was an increasing tendency for L RECs to charge for their services (30% study 1, 47% study 2) and these char ges varied by more than 400%. If such fees must be levied, a common scale i s desirable.