North Devon patients face long waits for cancer treatment despite National Cancer Plan

In December 2024, the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, announced his commitment to publish a National Cancer Plan after the previous government’s absurd U-turn on its own promised 10-year strategy, which was announced and then scrapped a year later.

After a wait of over a year, this plan was finally announced last week.

Going through it myself, I read it with two hats – as an MP and as someone who has spent years working in our local NHS and fundraising to strengthen cancer support here in North Devon.

The plan is full of the right ambition: earlier diagnosis, faster treatment, and with the headline goal that by 2035, three in four people diagnosed with cancer will survive for five years or more.

There’s much to welcome.

But the real test is whether it changes what patients experience in places like Barnstaple, Braunton, Ilfracombe, Combe Martin, South Molton, and our villages in between.

Here in North Devon, cancer does not just mean scans, treatment, and fear; it can also mean miles and miles of travel.

We’re proud of what North Devon District Hospital can do, including the Seamoor Unit, which delivers chemotherapy and day treatments, and the Fern Centre, which provides counselling, therapies, and practical support during and after treatment.

I’m personally proud of those services because, before I was elected, I led the fundraising to help make those two particular projects possible.

But we also have to be honest about what we still don’t have locally and what that means for patients.

For many people in North Devon, radiotherapy can mean daily trips for weeks because it is delivered at the Exeter Oncology Centre at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital (Wonford), not at Barnstaple.

These are long, exhausting round trips when you’re already unwell, and they’re costly too.

Coupled with the unreliability of some of our public transport connections, and with the North Devon Line having been shut for an extended period this winter, this can cause huge issues.

Having looked at the numbers for our area, I read that in our Royal Devon NHS Trust, over 1,200 patients waited more than 62 days for cancer treatment, which breaches the NHS standard that is considered safe between January and November 2025.

This is a worrying number and a clear sign of how cancer services were left on their knees by the previous Conservative government.

This is exactly why, with my Liberal Democrat colleagues, I have been calling for the 62-day treatment standard to be written into law.

It is also why we want this backed by 200 new, properly staffed radiotherapy machines and thousands more specialist cancer nurses, so patients aren’t left waiting in fear while their condition worsens.

Beating cancer is hard enough, so nobody should have to fight the system and the A361 or unreliable rural public transport at the same time.