Our patients tell us that we provide exceptional clinical care and a consistently positive experience. Our specialist expertise, together with our compassionate approach, makes a meaningful difference to people’s lives. Our task now is to build on this foundation and make an even greater difference in the years ahead.

Getting the basics right

Providing excellent patient care starts with getting the basics right and making it as easy as possible to access our services. We will pay as much attention to this as we will to our most ambitious plans.

We will:

  • Make sure patients have clear, relevant information about their care and can easily contact the right person or team when they need to.
  • Ensure communication between different teams is joined up and that relevant information is easily available to all teams. 
  • Provide services in ways that work for patients as well as the NHS, making it as easy as possible for everyone to access their care.

Delivering truly person-centred care

We will deliver truly person-centred care by responding thoughtfully to people’s individual needs, preferences, cultures and histories, and recognising what matters most to them. We will use patient insight, outcomes data and partnership working to improve experience, tackle inequalities and ensure our services are designed around people’s lives.

We will:

  • Consistently deliver and extend our ‘CCCARE’ quality scheme across inpatient, outpatient, chemotherapy and radiotherapy services.
  • Strengthen patient and carer involvement, feedback and co-production in service design and improvement.
  • Work with Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance to target neighbourhoods that need additional help to access timely cancer care.
  • Expand patient safety partnership working and learn systematically both from excellence and adverse events.
  • Use health inequalities data to identify and support underserved groups.
  • Build staff confidence to use real-time data, work with partner organisations, and share learning internally and externally. 
  • Expand the use of digital tools such as the NHS App.
  • Use every contact as an opportunity to support prevention, earlier diagnosis, prehabilitation, self-management and healthier lives after treatment.

CCCARE: our quality kitemark

CCCARE (‘CCC Care’) is our internal quality accreditation scheme for patient care. Wards and departments are rigorously inspected by a team of expert staff. Only those that meet the very highest standards are rated Good or Excellent. 

Continually learning, improving and innovating

Our patients recognise us as a leading cancer centre that is always seeking to improve care and experience. We are committed to delivering safe, effective and personalised care within a culture of learning, improvement and innovation. 

We already support staff to test new ideas, learn from experience and build on what works well. Over the lifetime of this strategy, we will do this with greater consistency and impact.

We will:

  • Strengthen our culture of continuous improvement so staff at every level are empowered to test their good ideas, learn and share what works well.
  • Support doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and non-clinical teams with the education, tools and leadership needed to improve services confidently.
  • Embed learning from patient feedback, data, innovation and frontline experience into service development and decision-making.
  • Use improvement methods to increase quality, safety, productivity and patient experience across all services.

Operational performance

We will:

  • Expand Clatterbridge in the Community (our treatment at home service), strengthen our networked care model, and work with community, primary care, hospice and voluntary sector colleagues to ensure patients receive seamless cancer care, rehabilitation, survivorship support and follow-up in the most appropriate setting.
  • Support people to receive care as fast as possible by delivering the 28 day Faster Diagnosis Standard and the 24-day treatment ambition for patients on the 62-day pathway, using digital tools to improve efficiency and oversight.
  • Work with partner organisations in primary and secondary care to support prehabilitation, rehabilitation and management of late effects beyond organisational boundaries.

Prehabilitation: Helping people prepare mentally and physically for cancer treatment. It can include help with food and nutrition, activity and wellbeing.

Rehabilitation: Helping people recover and adjust after cancer treatment.

Late effects: Helping people with any long-term effects from cancer or cancer treatment. This could be many years later.

Developing and improving our services

We are committed to continuously improving our services so that people receive advanced clinical care and a positive experience in a way that is efficient, responsive and sustainable.

Our outpatient transformation programme has already improved use of clinic space and strengthened the way we use technology and digital systems to make services more effective. Our inpatient transformation programme has improved operational flow, streamlined processes, delivered greater efficiency and supported the introduction of innovative therapies such as CAR T-cell therapy.

Over the life of this strategy, we will build on these achievements.

We will:

  • Refine administrative processes and communication between teams to improve patient experience and efficiency, using digital tools such as the NHS App where appropriate.
  • Help patients to stay well at home and access care when they need it by optimising and expanding risk-stratified outpatient follow-up models, including patient-initiated follow-up.
  • Increase productivity in outpatient services through initiatives such as group pre-assessment.
  • Develop ambulatory care (Ambicare) models so patients can receive treatment closer to home and patient flow improves.
  • Transform our care model through the Clinical Decisions Unit to support urgent cancer care in Cheshire and Merseyside more effectively.
  • Deliver the end-of-life care strategy, building on the substantial progress already made.

Ambicare: Aaron's story

Aaron needed treatment for acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). Patients usually stay in hospital overnight for this treatment but, thanks to our Ambicare service, Aaron could go home each night and spend time with his young daughter.

His clinical team monitored him closely and he had rapid access to hospital care if he became unwell and needed it. “Your mental health can go down when you’re in hospital,” said Aaron. “Being able to get home gives you light at the end of the tunnel. It’s just that bit of normality. The team in Clatterbridge are worth their weight in gold and, if you have any problems at all, they’re only a phone call away.”

Our Ambicare service has saved patients more than 1,000 nights in hospital. Now we plan to expand it so more patients can benefit. 

  • Grow our CAR T-cell therapy service to benefit patients across Cheshire and Merseyside.
  • Collaborate with local partners in primary, community and secondary care to support prehabilitation, prevention, recovery, rehabilitation and beyond-treatment care.
  • Develop care pathways that recognise frailty and respond appropriately.
  • Collaborate with regional and national partners to create a long-term plan for the National Eye Proton Centre.
  • Continue to modernise our Linac fleet using the best digital technology to improve radiotherapy quality, efficiency and experience.
  • Further develop our theranostics programme to ensure it is fit for the future. (Theranostics combines diagnostics and treatment in a single process. For example, using radioactive isotopes to diagnose and kill cancer cells.

Outpatient follow-up care that works for you

Patient-initiated follow-up gives people more control over their lives after treatment or while on maintenance therapies. They can stay well at home and contact us when they need to, instead of attending routine hospital appointments they don’t need. 

Many patients are already benefiting and use our patient portal (Patients Know Best) to tell us how they are feeling or contact us about any new symptoms or side effects.

Leading the way on urgent cancer care

Together with partner organisations and Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance, we are developing the UK’s first specialist urgent and emergency (UEC) cancer care service. It means people with cancer will have specialist oncology support whenever they need it.

TIL and other new services

We will be one of the first hospitals to provide new NHS treatments including TIL therapy. Tumour infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy uses cells taken directly from a patient’s tumour. The cells are re-engineered so they attack the cancer.

Patient environments

Our physical environment has a strong influence on patient experience. In recent years, we have made significant investments by developing and opening our flagship hospital, CCC-Liverpool, and Clatterbridge Paddington Health Hub. 

Over the next five years we will continue to deliver a planned programme of refurbishment and improvements across our estate.

We will:

  • Upgrade and improve facilities for our patients, supported by capital funding and Clatterbridge Cancer Charity.
  • Completely upgrade our Halton chemotherapy/SACT treatment unit in 2026 giving patients bright, modern and more comfortable facilities.
  • Invest in CCC-Wirral including a new chemotherapy/SACT treatment unit.
  • Maintain the high standards already in place at CCC-Liverpool and CCC-Aintree.
  • Continue to be rated in the top 5% of hospitals in the annual Patient Led Assessment of the Care Environment (PLACE).

Financial sustainability, productivity and value

Maintaining financial sustainability in a challenging environment is essential if we are to continue investing in patient care, workforce development and innovation. 

Over the life of this strategy, we will balance ambition with affordability and ensure that decisions on growth, investment and transformation are aligned to quality, safety, workforce wellbeing and value for money.

We will:

  • Work collaboratively with local and national commissioners to ensure new (and existing) treatments and services can be delivered with minimal delay, with clear assessment of affordability, recurrent consequences, opportunity cost and strategic fit.
  • Use our medium-term planning processes, annual planning rounds and routine performance oversight to test affordability, manage recurrent and non-recurrent commitments, and keep delivery financially sustainable.
  • Continue advancing the productivity improvement programme through benchmarking, service redesign, digital enablement and peer review, with quantified benefits tracked through routine financial and operational reporting and linked to reinvestment decisions where appropriate.
  • Implement a prioritised capital programme that maximises limited resources and is aligned to clinical quality, safety, sustainability and strategic objectives, with schemes sequenced according to affordability, deliverability and risk.
  • Seek additional funding and partnership opportunities that align with our strategy and investment plans, while explicitly managing dependency, delivery and affordability risk where schemes rely on external funding or third-party arrangements.
  • Continue our strong partnership with Clatterbridge Private Clinic to support financial resilience and reinvestment in frontline NHS services, with appropriate governance, transparency and clear oversight of risk, return and strategic benefit.
  • Use routine Board and committee oversight to track delivery of financial plans, capital commitments, productivity benefits and material financial risks across the strategy, including the impact of variance from plan and the mitigating actions required to maintain sustainability.

Environmental sustainability and health inequalities

We recognise our wider impact as an organisation operating across multiple sites and communities. As part of our social responsibility, we will continue to strengthen our contribution to environmental sustainability and reducing health inequalities.

Equity and inclusion

Cancer care has to be inclusive and accessible for everyone. We have been working with People First, a learning disability advocacy group, on ways we can make cancer care more accessible. CCC researchers have also been leading work to better understand the needs of autistic adults in cancer care.

We will:

  • Continue to develop and deliver our Green Plan in line with national guidance to support net zero carbon healthcare.
  • Implement and expand our sustainability programme.
  • Enhance our health inequalities and anchor institution initiatives.
  • Ensure through co-development and actively seeking feedback that our services are accessible in an equitable way for everyone. 
  • Ensure that no one is left behind as the NHS shifts from analogue to digital by understanding and mitigating the risk of digital exclusion.

Quality of life and survivorship

We know the impact a cancer diagnosis can have. Both our strategy and the National Cancer Plan aim to give people the best possible quality of life during and after their treatment. 

Our specialist benefits advice service helped patients access more than £6.6m of financial support they were entitled to in 2025/26, reducing the stress of money worries. Our supportive oncology team help people enjoy better quality of life by proactively managing pain and complex side-effects. 

We plan to develop more services like this over the next five years, including a real focus on survivorship support for patients completing treatment as they begin their life after cancer care. 

Young people and rarer cancers

We provide the specialist Teenage and Young Adult (TYA) cancer service for Cheshire and Merseyside, North Wales, the Isle of Man and parts of Lancashire. It means young people with cancer have peer support and facilities tailored to their needs. We also provide regional services for 
people with rarer cancers, cancer of unknown primary and malignancy of unknown origin.

Over the next five years we will continue to develop and enhance these services, supporting earlier diagnosis, increased use of genomics, greater access to clinical trials, and improved treatment.