Reform ‘wasteful’ research grant process, says UK bureaucracy review

Also, the funding should be reviewed only on the merits of the research. The review does tend to get biased once the details/affiliations of the applicant/team are known. After all, that is what the end goal is, research excellence.

Would strongly endorse the recommendation to make two-stage application processes the norm to avoid wasting the time of researchers (and administrators, colleagues, and peer reviewers) getting up lengthy project proposals. I had a very positive experience with the Leverhulme Trust's two-stage process.