The sector guides
- Software and technology: the one sector with dedicated HMRC guidance and case studies, where novel algorithms and beyond-available architectures qualify and configuration does not.
- Manufacturing: process and materials capability, the uncertainty-window discipline, and the sold-products consumables trap.
- Construction: novel structures and appreciably improved methods, and the contracting chains that decide whose claim exists at all.
- Engineering: the narrow-and-strong pattern, where the competent-professional bar is set by your own best people.
The situations that behave like sectors
Two pages serve company situations rather than industries, because the searches and the problems arrive that way. Startups and early-stage companies covers the first-claim calendar, advance assurance, and the cash caps. Loss-making companies covers ERIS, going concern, and payable-credit reality.
The claims we will not farm
One omission is policy, not oversight. We publish nothing aimed at the sectors HMRC has named as unlikely to be carrying out R&D: care homes, childcare providers, personal trainers, wholesalers and retailers, pubs and restaurants. Content that farms marginal claims from those markets is exactly the practice that brought this sector its reputation. Where genuine R&D exists in an unlikely place, the general guides apply and we will say so case by case. What we will not do is imply an industry qualifies to win its enquiries.
One test, everywhere
Every page above funnels to the same three questions: was an advance in the field sought, was there uncertainty a competent professional could not readily resolve, and can you evidence both? Those live on what counts as R&D, with the company-level conditions on who qualifies. Sector context tells you where to dig; it never does the digging.
Frequently asked questions
Our industry is not listed. Can we still claim?
Yes, if the work meets the test: the guides exist where questions arrive most often, not as a boundary on the relief or on who we act for. We work with UK companies in every sector, with or without a dedicated guide. Start with what counts as R&D and who qualifies; if the work is real, the absence of a sector page will not matter.
Our project spans more than one sector. Which guide applies?
Read the one closest to where your technical uncertainty lives, then the activity test itself. A software-heavy manufacturing project stands or falls on the same statutory questions whichever guide you started from, and the boundary method is identical everywhere.
Are sector claim rates or averages useful?
Mostly as marketing bait, and this site does not publish them as promises. Averages combine sound and unsound claims and say nothing about your project. The test is project-level; sector context only tells you where to look first.
Which sector gets checked most?
HMRC targets patterns rather than industries as such, but it has named sectors where R&D is unlikely, and payable-credit-heavy, first-time and step-change claims attract attention wherever they arise. The triggers page covers the patterns properly.