Natural Speech Technology (NST) is an EPSRC Programme Grant with the aim of significantly advancing the state-of-the-art in speech technology by making it more natural, approaching human levels of reliability, adaptability and conversational richness. NST is a collaboration between the Centre for Speech Technology Research (CSTR) at the University of Edinburgh, the Speech Group at the University of Cambridge and The Speech and Hearing Research Group (SpandH), University of Sheffield.