Observational study of 353 applications to London multicentre research ethics committee 1997-2000.

Since 1997 British studies involving five or more centres have required approval from both a multicentre research ethics committee and the local research ethics committee for each centre. A local committee can reject the protocol for local reasons but cannot amend it. Some researchers have criticised the process of obtaining ethical approval for multicentre studies, but little is known about the work of the 10 multicentre research ethics committees. I describe here the work of one of them.