Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many Linear Accelerators are available to NHS patients in England, and how many have been introduced since the publication of NHS England's Next Steps on the Five Year Forward View in March 2017

The NHS England radiotherapy modernisation fund was launched in October 2016 and committed £130 million of investment to replace and upgrade linear accelerators (LINACs) aged 10 years or more. During 2016/17 the fund enabled 18 new machines to be purchased and 12 to be upgraded in 23 National Health Service trusts. Next Steps on the Five Year Forward View, published in March 2017, set out a commitment to replace over 50 new radiotherapy machines in at least 34 hospitals during 2017/18 and 2018/19. This equates to around 25 new LINACs in each financial year and NHS England is on track to achieve this.

In 2016, NHS England completed a stocktake of radiotherapy equipment in England. At that time it was confirmed that there were in the region of 263 radiotherapy machines in full operational use.