National Cancer Plan published

5 Feb 2026

The Government has published a new National Cancer Plan for England, which aims to ensure that patients will receive faster diagnosis, quicker treatment and the support to live well with cancer.

National cancer audits have a pivotal role to play in improving care and outcomes for people with cancer, by shining a light on where care is working well and where improvements would have maximum impact. This Plan acknowledges the “excellent work” of the HQIP-commissioned National Cancer Audit Collaborating Centre (NATCAN), which hosts the 10 national cancer audits covering a range of common cancers including lung, breast and bowel cancer.

NATCAN, which was established in late 2022 as a national centre of excellence, has worked closely with healthcare providers to deliver a number of significant improvements in care and patient outcomes. For example, the National Bowel Cancer Audit (NBOCA) has found that 90-day postoperative mortality has almost halved over the past decade. Another example from the NBOCA is a significant improvement in the two-year postoperative survival rate, resulting in approximately 1,150 additional people surviving two years after surgery (2021/22 saw a 5-percentage-point increase compared with 2012/13).

The National Cancer Plan provides an opportunity for the national cancer audit programme to build on this work, and HQIP will ensure that it is designed to meet the ambitions of, and contribute to the delivery of, the Plan – by, for example, giving “Cancer Alliances and trusts the data they need to drive improvement” (Action 13 from the Plan). By working together, to use the data and insights available through NATCAN’s online data dashboards to deliver real-world improvements, the clinical audit and healthcare communities can support the Government to achieve the aims set out in the Plan, offering cancer patients faster diagnosis and quicker treatment, and supporting them to live well.

Further information about cancer care data from HQIP

Bowel cancer report, published Oct 2025 (National Bowel Cancer Audit, NBOCA)
Kidney cancer report, published Sept 2025 (National Kidney Cancer Audit, NKCA)
Lung cancer report, published April 2025 (National Lung Cancer Audit, NLCA)
Metastatic breast cancer report, published Sept 2025 (National Audit of Metastatic Breast Cancer, NAoMe)
Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma report, published Sept 2025 (National Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Audit, NNHLA)
Oesophago-gastric cancer report, published Sept 2025 (National Oesophago-Gastric Cancer Audit, NOGCA)
Ovarian cancer report, published Sept 2025 (National Ovarian Cancer Audit, NOCA)
Pancreatic cancer report, published Sept 2025 (National Pancreatic Cancer Audit, NPaCA)
Primary breast cancer report, published Sept 2025 (National Audit of Primary Breast Cancer, NAoPri)
Prostate cancer report, published Oct 2025 (National Prostate Cancer Audit, NPCA)