UCLH welcomes the National Cancer Plan

The Department for Health and Social Care has published the National Cancer Plan. It sets out a bold, long-term approach to improving cancer outcomes, experience and equity over the next decade. 

Shaped by lived experience, the Plan focuses on earlier diagnosis, improved performance, better quality of life and reducing inequalities, embedding the three shifts and new care model from the 10 Year Health Plan into cancer pathways.

The central ambition is that by 2035, three in four people diagnosed with cancer will be cancer-free, or living well with cancer after five years, delivering the fastest improvement in cancer survival this century.  

UCLH welcomes the National Cancer Plan’s aims to: 

• Improve waiting times for cancer diagnostics and start of treatment 
• Become a global leader on cancer survival by 2035 
• Drive up the quality of life for people living with cancer 
• Use research, development and innovation as a key to enable progress 
• Increase focus on children and young people’s cancer, and on rarer cancers 

As a hospital trust with first-class acute and specialist services, UCLH is already working to make these goals a reality for people going through cancer diagnosis and having treatment. This vital work is happening both independently and together with the network of healthcare partners in North Central London.

Key points in the National Cancer Plan include improving access to research and to specialist treatments, achieving high uptake in screening for bowel, breast, cervical and lung cancers, surveillance for people at higher risk of cancer due to genetic variation, such as Lynch Syndrome or having BRCA 1 or BRCA2 gene alterations, and fair access to the latest treatment and trials for children and young people with cancer. 

Professor Geoff Bellingan, UCLH medical director for surgery and cancer,says: “Many of the principal areas of the National Cancer Plan are where we already have great strengths and where we are constantly striving to improve. We are a renowned research hospital and always seeking innovative ways to improve treatments and care. We are the providers of the local Lung Cancer Screening programme. 

"Caring for patients with gene alterations is already high on our agenda particularly with our Lynch Surveillance Hub and the more recently established ovarian cancer surveillance service for women at high risk. We welcome the ambitious targets in the plan. 

"We’ll continue to work with our dedicated staff teams and with our colleagues and partners in North Central London and beyond, to ensure quicker diagnosis, the latest and most innovative treatment and support to live well with cancer, for all our patients.” 

UCLH activity also features in the National Cancer Plan to illustrate what is achievable and help to share good practice. The REACH-U buddy scheme supports men of African and Caribbean heritage needing prostate cancer treatment. By being able to discuss culturally sensitive issues with a non-clinical person has led to better engagement by patients and made a positive impact on treatment decisions. 

The pilot has been so successful that it is being rolled out in North Central London to offer support from the point of referral.