Cancer Registration Statistics, England, 2024

The counts and rates of cancer registration are designated as  Accredited Official Statistics. Accredited Official Statistics are a subset of Official Statistics, which have been certified by the UK Statistics Authority as compliant with its code of practice for statistics. These official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in December 2011. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics. The statistics code of practice compliance statement for NHS England can be found here. 

The cancer registry records all diagnoses that are invasive cancer, in situ, uncertain or unknown, and benign tumours of brain and central nervous system. This is currently defined using the behaviour code in ICD-O-3 rev 2019. This broadly corresponds to the ICD-10 codes for cancer (C00.0 to C97), in situ diagnoses (D00.0 to D09.9), selected benign diagnoses (D32.0 to D33.9, D35.2 to D35.4), diagnoses of uncertain or unknown behaviour (D37.0 to D48.9), and also some amyloidosis (E85*), amyloidosis of skin (L99*), proliferating trichilemmal cysts (L72*), and fascial fibromatosis (M72*). The E85* and L99* registrations are currently included in the NDRS group for Blood cancer (haematological neoplasms) in Table 1 of data download, and the L72* and M72* registrations may be included in future NDRS groups as these are further developed. They are excluded from Table 2 of data download. There are fewer than 200 tumours registered annually not coded to ICD-10 C* or D*, and fewer than 500 D* codes that were non-registrable in ICD-O-2 as benign but are now registrable in ICD-O-3. 

Care should be taken when making comparisons between the historic and latest available data. 

Cancer registrations in England can take up to 5 years after the end of a given calendar year to reach 100% completeness, due to the continuing accrual of late registrations. Further changes may still occur after 5 years following later diagnostic testing and related to patient opt-outs. However, these late changes are uncommon. 

Diagnoses of cancer are registered for each separate cancer; a person may be diagnosed with more than one type of cancer and would then appear more than once in the incidence statistics; the progression or recurrence of previous cancer diagnoses are not counted as new diagnoses. 

We report by NDRS cancer site groups using the finalised 2013-2024 registrations definitions. Some of these NDRS cancer groups have changed from the 2013-2023 groups used previously:  

• Bowel has changed to exclude the appendix. This is due to many appendix tumours having a different age profile, treatment and outcomes in comparison to other bowel cancers. There are also other small changes in inclusion of cancers in this group, and the detailed groups for bowel have been re-defined. 

• The anus group has changed to reflect changes in the bowel group.  

• The small intestine group is no longer defined in ICD-10 only. 

• Some of the bladder detailed groups have merged. 

• Kaposi sarcoma has moved from the Soft tissue sarcoma group to the Other malignant excluding bone and soft tissue group. 

Full detail of these changes to NDRS cancer groups is available on the Standard cancer group definitions - NDRS website page. 

The methodology for deriving and reporting stage at diagnosis previously referenced the separate “Case-mix Adjusted Percentage of Cancers Diagnosed at Stages 1 and 2 England” publication. To ensure all information relating to this publication is in one place, the methodology from the separate publication relevant to the current series of Cancer Registration Statistics is stated within the methodology update document.

Please see the methodology update document for full details of all changes to the methodology for this publication of the Cancer Registrations Statistics