National Cancer Plan for England launches today

Launching today, the National Cancer Plan sets out a bold, long-term approach to improving cancer outcomes, experience and equity over the next decade. The plan is shaped through extensive engagement with patients, partners and professionals, and details how we will fully modernise our approach to cancer care in England, propelling us to be a genuine global leader in cancer outcomes.

The plan sets out how we will improve performance, so we meet the cancer waiting time standards by the end of this parliament. It includes how we will improve survival. The headline ambition is that, by 2035, three in four people diagnosed with cancer will be cancer-free, or living well with cancer after five years. Finally, the plan will improve quality of life for people being diagnosed with, treated or living with cancer.

Additionally, this plan takes the 10 Year Health Plan’s three shifts, and the new care model they combine to create, and hardwires it into cancer pathways. The publication of this plan marks an acceleration of change – one that over ten years, will translate to 320,000 more lives saved, and many more people supported to live well after treatment or when living with cancer as a long term condition.

In Somerset we were the first NHS trust in the country to introduce self-referrals for cancer diagnosis - with over 2,000 patients having already used this route so far. You can find out more information about cancer self-referrals here.