The Department for Transport (DfT), in partnership with Innovate UK, has officially opened the First of a Kind (FOAK) competition, which aims to award 4.8 million GBP in grant funding to new projects aimed at improving safety and reliability on Britain’s rail network.
The competition seeks to address persistent issues on the railway, such as safety concerns, service reliability of anti-social behaviour.
Previous competition winners include Transmission Dynamics
© Network Rail
This year, applicants will be asked to put forward ideas to help deliver major projects both on time and within budget, improve the passenger service performance and reduce the industry’s overall impact on the environment.
All funding will be used to enable innovators to bring their ideas to life and present them to the industry, increasing their potential to be rolled out across the country’s rail network.
Rail Minister, Lord Peter Hendy, said:
Innovation is central to bringing Britain’s railway into the 21st century and our funding for the First of a Kind competition puts this principle into action, helping turn creative concepts into real-life solutions.
Supporting new ideas is all part of our plan to modernise track and train under Great British Railways, designing and adopting world-leading technology that improves passenger experience while supporting jobs, growth and homes.
Now entering its ninth round; the FOAK competition has thus far been backed with 62.5 million GBP in government funding to date. Previous winners include Transmission Dynamics Ltd, one of seven project entrants from 2025 who developed and introduced intelligent roadside warning and analysis systems designed to prevent disruption following collisions between large goods vehicles and low-clearance bridges or tunnels.
Trials of this technology are now underway, including in Northumberland, where the detection system recently alerted Network Rail when a bridge was struck, enabling teams to quickly perform an assessment of any damage and minimise the likelihood of disruption.
Elsewhere, other FOAK winners from 2025 developed an automated monitoring system to track deliveries to an HS2 development site. The system used cameras integrated with AI software, alerting site workers to the delivery of time-critical supplies helping to keep projects on track.
Organisations have until 24 June 2026 to submit their applications, with successful projects set to begin on 1 September 2026.