To Sir John Kingman, Chair of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, Chief Executive, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Professor Rory Duncan, UK Director of Talent and Skills, Professor Jennifer Rubin, Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), We, the undersigned, represent postgraduate research students from the NINE doctoral training programme based across Durham University, Newcastle University, Northumbria University, Queen’s University Belfast, University of Sunderland, Teesside University, and Ulster University. There have been several attempts on behalf of postgraduate research students and doctoral training partnerships to negotiate a fair response to the pandemic from UKRI since the beginning of the crisis in March 2020. The volume of these attempts escalated in December 2020 following the announcement of the UKRI's phase 2 1 ‘funding extensions’ policy. At the time, many of us argued that this provision wa