The National Cancer Plan for England: a roadmap to 2035

The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England published the National Cancer Plan for England on 4 February 2026, setting a ten-year strategy to transform outcomes. This plan states the ambition that by 2035, three in four people diagnosed with cancer will be cancer-free or living well five years after their diagnosis. To achieve this, the government intends to save 320,000 more lives by reforming the care model, shifting from hospital-centric services to a personalised, proactive, community-based approach.

Operational transformation and NHS performance

A primary focus involves restoring NHS performance standards. The plan commits to meeting all cancer waiting time standards by March 2029. This includes ensuring:

• 85% of patients start treatment within 62 days of referral.
• 80% receive a diagnosis or all-clear within 28 days.
• 96% start treatment within 31 days of a decision to treat.

To support these targets, the government is investing £2.3 billion in diagnostics to deliver 9.5 million additional tests annually by 2029. This investment funds the expansion of Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs), which will increasingly operate as 'one-stop shops' for testing.

Implications for the life sciences sector

The plan signals a shift towards precision and targeted medicines earlier in the patient pathway, with implications for the NHS workforce and industry, including pharma and medtech.

Pharmaceutical

Pharmaceutical teams should note the emphasis on prevention, including a 'moon shot' to end obesity through accelerated GLP-1 medicine uptake. The government plans value-based partnerships with industry to expand eligibility for primary care prescribing in this area. Other key points include:

Genomics and 'green-lit' runways: Market access will increasingly depend on supporting the biomarker and genomic infrastructure needed to deliver targeted therapies. The NHS Genomic Medicine Service will expand testing to all eligible patients, with results required in time to inform treatment.

Decentralised clinical trials: A new Cancer Trials Accelerator Programme and the Vaccine Launchpad aim to make the NHS the global partner of choice. This requires industry to adapt protocols for recruitment and follow-up within community settings and neighbourhood health centres.

Prevention and novel procurement: Beyond the obesity 'moon shot' and value-based partnerships for GLP-1 medicines, the government intends to use advance market commitments to stimulate breakthroughs in rare cancers where survival has remained stagnant.

Expansion of liquid biopsies: The NHS will extend the use of 'circulating tumour DNA' (ctDNA) and other blood-based biomarker testing to more cancer types. This provides an opportunity for companies with portfolios that can leverage earlier identification of relapse.

Medtech

For medtech, the plan moves technology from a peripheral support tool to a core driver of productivity and diagnostic speed:

The AI productivity engine: Beyond lung cancer, AI will be scaled to pathology for breast and prostate cancer. Providers should focus on 'ambient voice technology' and workflow tools that reduce administrative burdens to create more 'time to care'.

Surgical robotics and wearables: The government aims for 500,000 robotic procedures by 2035, supported by a new national registry and training standards. Simultaneously, the 'big bet' on wearables intends to shift monitoring into the home, identifying needs for intervention in real-time.

One-stop community diagnostics: Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) are evolving into 'one-stop shops'. This creates a high demand for integrated diagnostic suites and digital platforms like 'single-queue diagnostics' that direct patients to the fastest available testing site.

Incentivised innovation pathways: High-performing "Integrated Health Organisations" will have the freedom to experiment with new financial flows and incentives, specifically to adopt innovations that reduce emergency presentations or improve survival in high-risk populations.

NHS

For NHS professionals, the shift to a neighbourhood-led model represents a structural change in how clinical and supportive services integrate. A key component is the introduction of a dual-lead system to prevent patients from experiencing a "cliff edge" after hospital treatment.

The dual-lead model: Every patient will have a named neighbourhood care lead to coordinate community support, acting as a counterpart to the hospital-based Clinical Nurse Specialist.

Agile clinical decision-making: Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) meetings will be reset to reduce bureaucracy. The focus will shift to complex cases only, using specialist paediatric leads for younger patients and direct consultant access for primary care teams.

Supportive and acute oncology: Teams will deliver an enhanced level of 'supportive oncology', including physical activity and psychological care, within the community. This includes managing acute symptoms locally to reduce emergency department admissions.

End-of-treatment summaries: Clinicians must co-produce an end-of-treatment summary with every patient. This document provides a formal route back to hospital care if complications arise and guides ongoing community support.

Addressing rare cancers and younger patients

The plan provides a bespoke approach for children and young people, plus rare and less common cancers, where survival has remained stagnant for decades. Key commitments include:

• A travel fund of up to £10 million per year for families of children with cancer.
• The appointment of a national lead for rare cancers to drive survival rates into the top European quartile by 2035.
• Implementation of the Rare Cancers Bill and the Tobacco and Vapes Bill to address long-term incidence and access to trials.

Establishing pathways for complex care

The shift toward community-based care needs infrastructure to support high-complexity and high-cost therapies. CHASE’s experience in establishing remote specialist access and clinic set-up models can help to bridge this infrastructure gap.

Our work in other therapy areas, like biologics, includes a model applicable to oncology, rare diseases, and cell or gene therapies. The model’s core functions, including remote specialist oversight, administrative know-how, patient counselling, workflow structuring, pharmacy coordination, and follow-up, all of which are universal components of modern speciality therapeutics, including innovative cancer therapies.

Our expertise in patient identification and recall, having managed over 1 million patient contacts, supports the plan's preventative goals. From boosting immunisation rates through person-centred support to identifying high-risk patients for screening, we can provide the operational scale to deliver the new plan’s ambitions.

Conclusion

The National Cancer Plan, in line with the NHS 10-Year ‘Fit for the Future’ plan, represents a move towards a technology-enabled, preventative healthcare model. It prioritises early diagnosis through biomarker testing and national screening rollouts and seeks to eliminate geographic variation in care quality. Success depends on the ability of the NHS and industry to collaborate on delivering these innovations at scale.

CHASE provides the expertise to help you navigate the changing NHS landscape. We recently won the ‘Partnership Working to address National Healthcare Priorities (National Projects)’ award at the Excellence in Healthcare Partnerships Awards 2026 for our work with the Black Country ICB. Whether you require high-performing outsourced teams to support new community pathways or help to create viable NHS–Industry Partnerships, we can deliver solutions that bring industry and the NHS together and drive results.  

Get in touch with our team today.