Following a slow-down in performance against national cancer targets, NHS England has asked trusts to work with their cancer alliances to review further opportunities for performance improvement across cancer pathways.

GIRFT is supporting trusts to deliver improvements against the 28-day Faster Diagnosis Standard and 62-day cancer performance. Working with the cancer alliances, trusts have been asked to focus on the core pathways of skin, lower GI, gynaecology, urological and breast cancers, with a particular focus on the diagnostic pathway, and the treatment end of the lung cancer pathway.

Providers and cancer alliances can request specific support from the GIRFT team by emailing Caroline Ager at c.ager@nhs.net.

Target areas for performance improvement include:

• Better utilising community diagnostic centre capacity for diagnostics on cancer or related elective pathways where this is available.
• Opportunities to go further and faster on key pathway development deliverables including:
  • Teledermatology.
  • FIT triage for the lower GI pathway.
  • Alternative pathways for low-risk patients such as breast pain and post-HRT unscheduled bleeding.
  • Non-medical biopsy capacity for the prostate pathway.

The aim is to deliver and exceed the 28-day Faster Diagnosis Standard target of 80% in the next three months, and go even further by the end of 2025-26, and embed lasting, patient-centred improvements that reduce delays and save lives

The GIRFT team is supporting the existing cancer Pathway Implementation Groups and collating best practice pathways for the key tumour groups.  Facilitated sessions provide a forum for discussion and feedback with advice and guidance from the GIRFT clinical leads.

The Somerset, Wiltshire, Avon and Gloucestershire (SWAG) Cancer Alliance has been working with the GIRFT team since July 2025 when the alliance launched its Days Matter campaign as part of a 100-day cancer improvement challenge set by GIRFT programme lead Professor Tim Briggs. Information, shared learning and supporting documents from the SWAG Cancer Alliance are available on the SWAG FutureNHS platform here.