Our strategy is grounded in the 10 Year Health Plan and the National Cancer Plan, which provide a clear framework focused on earlier diagnosis, delivering more care closer to home, making better use of digital, and taking stronger action on prevention and inequalities.

The 10 Year Health Plan for England: Fit for the Future is built around three core strategic shifts:

  • From hospital to community
  • From analogue to digital
  • From sickness to prevention

These shifts are not separate national ambitions – they are the organising principles that will shape how we design services, deploy our workforce, use technology and work with partners over the next five years. This strategy therefore commits explicitly to delivering all three shifts in a way that improves cancer outcomes, experience, access and productivity for the population we serve.

The priorities in the National Cancer Plan align strongly with our strategic direction: restoring cancer waiting times, improving diagnostics and pathology, providing more care closer to home, normalising access to research, trials and genomics, and improving quality of life and survivorship. 

We will deliver these priorities through the three shifts in the 10 Year Health 
Plan: hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention.

Our aim is to:

  • Achieve the national Cancer Waiting Time standards by 2029, ensuring quicker diagnosis and timely treatment.
  • Be a global leader in cancer survival by 2035, with a goal for three out of four people diagnosed with cancer to be cancer-free or thriving five years after diagnosis.
  • Improve quality of life for people living with and beyond cancer by providing enhanced support during and after treatment, promoting rehabilitation, survivorship, self-management and healthier lives beyond cancer.
  • Design cancer care around people’s lives through personalised care, neighbourhood services, supportive oncology, and end-of-treatment support.
  • Deliver world-class cancer care through world class research, founded on data, adopting innovations, increased trials access and speed, and genomics.
  • Improve outcomes and experience for children and young people with cancer by early diagnosis, genomics, clinical trials, and long-term follow-up.
  • Improve outcomes and experience for patients with rare and less common cancers. Our aim is parity with common cancers, better data, earlier diagnosis, specialist MDTs and centres, research and clinical trials.