Halfway through the NHS Long Term Plan – what does this mean for bowel cancer?
Tuesday 3 December 2024
We’re proud to launch our new report, ‘Delivering the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan: a review of progress on bowel cancer in England’. The report looks at how the NHS Long Term Plan has made a difference for bowel cancer diagnosis, treatment, and care, and where there is still further to go.
What is our report about?
In 2019, the NHS Long Term Plan (LTP) was published. It set out NHS England’s priorities to improve the health service over a 10-year timeframe (2019-2029). The LTP covered all areas of the NHS and made several commitments for bowel cancer including lowering the bowel cancer screening age from 60 to 50, significantly improving genetic testing for bowel cancer patients, and ensuring personalised care plans for cancer patients.
Most importantly, the NHS LTP set an ambition to diagnose 75% of all cancers at an early stage (stage 1 or 2) by 2028. This was welcomed, as bowel cancer is treatable and curable especially if diagnosed at an early stage.
As of 2024, we’re now at the halfway point of the NHS LTP. So, we set out to understand what’s been achieved during these first five years, and what more needs to be done to push progress on bowel cancer diagnosis and care. Our new report ‘Delivering the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan: a review of progress on bowel cancer in England’ explains what we found.
What did we find?
Our report found that NHS England have made good progress against the NHS LTP’s commitments for bowel cancer, especially given the disruption to cancer services during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, early diagnosis for bowel cancer hasn’t improved and patients are waiting far too long for key tests for bowel cancer.
Achievements:
- The screening age for bowel cancer is being lowered from 60 down to 50. Soon, bowel cancer screening will be available to everyone aged 50-74 in England
- Lynch syndrome is a genetic condition which increases a person’s lifetime risk of bowel cancer to up to 80%. We’ve seen significant improvement in Lynch syndrome testing for all patients diagnosed with bowel cancer
- Wider implementation of personalised care plans for cancer patients means more patients are receiving care and treatment plans that reflect their personal needs
Where more needs to be done:
- Early diagnosis of bowel cancer. This is because only 39% of patients are diagnosed at stage 1 and 2, when the disease is most treatable and curable. This is much lower than the aim of 75% in the LTP
- Cancer waiting times. These are especially long for those urgently referred for suspected bowel cancer, a patients wait longer for tests than those on other urgent cancer pathways
- Starting treatment for bowel cancer. Recent analysis by Cancer Research UK and NHS England found that 15% of patients waiting over 104 days to start cancer treatment in 2022/23 had bowel cancer
What are we doing next?
Our report shows that the current commitments within the NHS LTP don’t go far enough to cover all the elements of bowel cancer diagnosis, treatment, and care. There must be a greater focus on bowel cancer in new national health plans to transform outcomes for bowel cancer patients. This is why, within our report, we have recommended that the Government do the following.
- Develop and implement a fully funded, long-term cancer plan for England to address the specific challenges facing bowel cancer patients
- Optimise the Bowel Cancer Screening Programme further, in line with UK National Screening Committee recommendation to test everyone aged 50-74 at a higher sensitivity, and improve data collection to understand the impact this would have
- Address staff and resource challenges in diagnostic services that are causing longer waiting times
During the development of our report, the Labour Government announced a new 10 Year Plan for Health which will be published in Spring 2025, followed by a new cancer plan for England. We welcome this move as a positive step towards more directed action and progress for cancer services and care.
We’re already working to influence these new plans by using the findings of our report to help inform our submission to the CHANGE NHS Government consultation. Along with our campaigners, we’ve been setting out what we’d like to see included in the next 10 Year Plan for Health and subsequent cancer plan. We hope that our submission will be used to influence cancer policy in the coming years, leading to improvements in waiting times and increasing early diagnosis for bowel cancer.
- Find out more and read the report in full
- Learn more about our other campaigning work
- Find out more about the diagnosis of bowel cancer
