Add your professional voice to the Government’s consultation into the 10 Year Cancer Plan. This is a massive opportunity for the radiotherapy community to have its say. The Government will use responses to form a 10-year cancer plan. If enough of the radiotherapy community respond our views will be impossible to ignore. Every individual who takes part makes the voice of radiotherapy even louder. Don’t worry if you have never taken part in a consultation like this one, it only takes a few minutes to share your view. This is your chance to tell the Government what needs to happen to support the workforce, patients and their families, and deliver the world-class cancer service the country deserves.
The call for evidence is open to all until 11:45pm on 1 April 2022 and can be easily completed via an online survey here. Please take the survey and share your view to show the Government the strength of feeling within the radiotherapy community.
The Department of Health and Social Care consultation on the 10 Year Cancer Plan can be found here – . The Government are seeking the views of individuals, professionals, and organisations to understand how they can meet the ambition set out in The NHS Long Term Plan, to save thousands more lives each year by dramatically improving diagnosis and treatment of cancer. They are also looking into how they can build on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.
We all know that radiotherapy has a key role to play in improving cancer outcomes in the UK but only if it is correctly prioritised, funded and supported by the Government. But radiotherapy services are on their knees and only receive 5% of the entire cancer budget. We feel strongly it should be one of the top priorities in the cancer plan, not near the bottom which has too often been the case.
It is important you share your own views in the consultation. We have included a few bullet points from our consultation response should you wish to support them in your submission.
The 10-Year Cancer plan needs to:
- Appoint a minister for radiotherapy: Many of the problems in radiotherapy stem from a lack of understanding at the top of Government. The impacts of this are huge for workforce numbers and access to modern radiotherapy equipment. We need the Government to appoint a radiotherapy tsar to oversee the future of radiotherapy and standardise world-class cancer care.
- Increase access to radiotherapy in the UK: Radiotherapy should be given to 53-60% of cancer patients but according to CRUK figures only 27% of UK cancer patients receive it. This has disastrous consequences for patients. More than 3.5 million people do not have radiotherapy within the recommended 45 minute travel time of their home. The UK Government need to invest in access to radiotherapy services closer to people’s homes.
- A workforce plan that includes the multidisciplinary radiotherapy workforce: Radiotherapy plays a vital role in cancer care but too often when discussing cancer policy decision makers overlook the specialist cancer workforce.
- Out of date equipment: Half of NHS Trusts have machines that are past their 10-year suggested life span which has consequential reliability issues and an inability to deliver modern precis radiotherapy. There is an urgent need for replacement machines and additional capacity to ensure we can treat more patients, faster, with better access to curative treatments like radiotherapy.
- Bureaucracy: Radiotherapy is held back by red tape that leads to underperformance, inefficiencies, and waste. There are perverse tariffs that mean even in centres that have more modern machines that can treat patients more quickly in fewer sessions, staff are not allowed to do so. Instead, they have to treat less effectively over more sessions as the current tariff generates income to the Trust based on the number of visits. There is still rationing of access to advanced precision radiotherapy.
- Include recommendations from the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Radiotherapy manifesto for world class radiotherapy services to achieve the above by investing £850M over three years.
The radiotherapy community can use this consultation as an opportunity to emphasise the importance of radiotherapy and the significant role it plays in cancer care going forward.
