Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 4 January 2018 to Question 147424 on Radiotherapy, when the postcode-level dataset which will enable the calculation of travel times to radiotherapy centres will be published.

In June 2018, The National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) published three reports relating to patient travel times and cancer, in response to the Independent Cancer Taskforce recommendation 27.

The reports are available at the following link:

http://www.ncin.org.uk/cancer_type_and_topic_specific_work/topic_specific_work/travel_times

The reports cover the following topics:

- Travel Times and Methodology summarises NCRAS’ investigations of several possible ways of calculating travel times;

- Travel Times and Cancer Survival is an overview of survival for the four most common cancers, relative to travel time to the nearest hospital with a relevant multidisciplinary team; and

- Travel Times and Cancer Treatment is a report on treatment with radiotherapy for localised prostate cancer, relative to travel time to a radiotherapy centre.

Postcode-level data is potentially disclosive and is therefore not made routinely available. Such data may be made available to researchers who apply through Public Health England’s Office for Data Release, with a specific health-care related research question and appropriate research ethics permissions.