People with cancer face ‘ticking timebomb’ due to NHS staff shortages
People with cancer face a “ticking timebomb” of delays in getting diagnosed and treated because the NHS is too short-staffed to provide prompt care, senior doctors have warned.An NHS-wide shortage of radiologists and oncologists means patients are enduring long waits to have surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy and have a consultant review their care.Hold-ups lead to some people’s cancer spreading, which can reduce the chances of their treatment working and increase the risk of death, the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) said.NHS cancer services are struggling to keep up with rising demand for tests, such as scans and X-rays, and treatment, created by the growing number of people getting the disease.Evidence the RCR collected from the heads of NHS cancer centres across the UK and the clinical directors of radiology departments shows that delays to potentially “life-saving” care occur because of “chronic” workforce gaps.
All radiology bosses surveyed said during 2024 their units could not scan all patients within the NHS’s maximum waiting times because they did not have enough staff.“Delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment will inevitably mean that for some patients their cancer will progress while they wait, making successful treatment more difficult and risking their survival,” said Dr Katharine Halliday, the RCR’s president.The findings are particularly worrying because research has found that a patient’s risk of death can increase by about 10% for each month they have to wait for treatment.Nine out of 10 cancer centre chiefs said patients were delayed starting their treatment last year while seven in 10 said they feared workforce gaps were putting patients’ safety at risk.“The government must train up more radiologists and oncologists to defuse this ticking timebomb for cancer diagnosis and treatment,” added Halliday.
One head of a cancer service said patients with suspected bladder or prostate cancer had faced long waits to be tested, that more than 1,500 patients had to wait longer than they should for a follow-up appointment to review their treatment, and that staff were feeling “burnt out”.Other doctors also said:“Our waiting times for breast radiotherapy are now the worst I have ever known in 20 years.”“Current wait for head and neck cancers [is] six weeks, meaning possible progression before radiotherapy.”“A multiple week wait for palliative treatment has sometimes led to deterioration to the point is no longer possible.”Some cancer centres are so short-staffed that they are sending patients to be treated quicker at nearby hospitals under “mutual aid” agreements, the RCR says in two reports published on Thursday.
Radiologists and clinical oncologists face “unsustainable” workloads, it adds,Sign up to Headlines UKGet the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morningafter newsletter promotionThe strain of working in overstretched cancer services is so great that doctors are quitting at younger ages, with some even doing so while still in their 30s, the RCR found,Genevieve Edwards, the chief executive of Bowel Cancer UK, said: “The disease is treatable and curable if diagnosed early, but too many patients are facing long delays to start their treatment after going to their GP with symptoms,These delays may lead to the cancer spreading, making it harder to treat successfully,”The Department of Health and Social Care acknowledged that too many patients face delays.
“This government inherited a broken NHS where too many cancer patients are waiting too long for treatment but through our plan for change, we are determined to tackle delays, diagnose cancer earlier and treat it faster,” a spokesperson said.“We are delivering 40,000 more appointments every week, investing £1.5bn in both new surgical hubs and AI scanners, rolling out cutting-edge radiotherapy machines to every region in the country, and backing our radiologists and oncologists with above inflation pay rises for the second year in a row.“Later this year we will also publish a refreshed workforce plan to ensure the NHS has the right people in the right places to deliver the care patients need.”
Hedge fund orders London-based analysts back to office five days a week
Man Group has ordered its London-based analysts to return temporarily to the office five days a week, as the world’s biggest listed hedge fund seeks to recover from a period of poor performance amid Donald Trump’s tariff war.Quantitative analysts working at Man AHL, the company’s computer-run fund that aims to identify and follow momentum in markets, have been told they are expected to be in its offices daily until the end of July as part of an “all hands on deck” project.The edict applies to about 150 staff in London, just under 10% of the overall group’s 1,700 global employees, the Financial Times reported.“Man AHL has asked its staff in London to work in the office five days a week for a three-month period to support an ‘all hands on deck’ cross-team research project,” the company said. “While these cross-team initiatives are infrequent, experience has shown that a period of highly focused, in-person collaboration allows significant research progress to be made in a relatively short amount of time
UK house prices fall by more than expected amid economic uncertainty
UK house prices suffered a steeper than expected fall last month and the biggest quarterly drop in value in almost a year, as economic uncertainty continued to affect the property market.The average property price fell by 0.4% month on month in May to £296,648, a much steeper fall than the 0.1% decline City economists had expected.Figures published by Halifax on Friday showed that the cost of a typical UK property has fallen in three of the past four months, with the drop in May following a 0
Sports Direct pricing practices ‘may be breaking the law’, Which? says
Sports Direct could be breaking the law by misleading shoppers into thinking they are getting a good deal, a consumer body has claimed, after it looked at prices of items ranging from trainers to hoodies.Which? said it had reported the retailer to the Competition and Markets Authority after uncovering what it claimed were “some questionable and dodgy pricing tactics” on its website.The organisation said it had found products being sold on SportsDirect.com with recommended retail prices (RRPs) “that appear to be misleading”, as its researchers could not find the products sold at that RRP price anywhere else online.It meant people may be being misled “into thinking they are getting a better deal than they really are”
Bonuses banned for 10 English water bosses over sewage pollution
Bonuses for 10 water company executives in England, including the boss of Thames Water, will be banned with immediate effect over serious sewage pollution, as part of new powers brought in by the Labour government.The top executives of six water companies who have overseen the most serious pollution events will not receive performance rewards this year, the environment secretary, Steve Reed, said.The companies – Thames Water, Anglian Water, Southern Water, United Utilities, Wessex Water and Yorkshire Water – are responsible for the most serious category of sewage pollution into rivers and seas, all of which are, or have been, under criminal investigation by the Environment Agency.Under powers in Labour’s Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, the regulator, Ofwat, is now able to ban bonuses for water executives where a company fails to meet key standards on environmental and financial performance, or is convicted of a criminal offence.In the past 10 years, executives at the nine main water and sewerage companies have been paid £112m in bonuses while sewage pollution increased to a record last year of 2,487 events
Wise goes to the US. Will its founder’s supercharged voting rights follow? | Nils Pratley
Back in 2021, the arrival on the London stock market of Wise, a rapidly expanding money transfer company, generated a feelgood factor at a useful moment.It came a month after overhyped Deliveroo flopped on debut. And, since Wise was a pure fintech business, as opposed to a pizza delivery outfit with an app, there was reason to think the UK might be getting its act together in the sector that politicians swoon over. Shoreditch’s finest, and its Estonian founders, would show the way in UK fintech. Wise sported a £9bn valuation
British Gas owner strikes £20bn gas deal with Norway’s state energy company
The owner of British Gas has struck a £20bn deal with Norway’s state energy company to buy enough gas to meet nearly 10% of the UK’s needs for the next decade.Under the agreement, Centrica will buy around 5bn cubic meters of gas from Equinor – enough to supply 5m UK homes – every year from this winter until 2035 at the prevailing market rate.It is the latest long-term deal between the UK and Norway, which has been one of Britain’s largest sources of imported gas for the last 50 years. But in a nod to Britain’s net zero agenda, the latest agreement will include a clause that allows the UK to swap gas imports for emissions-free hydrogen from Equinor’s UK hydrogen plant.Equinor is working with Centrica and the energy company SSE on multiple low carbon hydrogen projects on the north bank of the Humber
Amazon promises fake reviews crackdown after investigation by UK watchdog
23andMe back on the auction block after former CEO makes 11th-hour bid
UK sales of new Tesla cars slump by more than a third amid Musk backlash
Amazon ‘testing humanoid robots to deliver packages’
English-speaking countries more nervous about rise of AI, polls suggest
Trump family disown debut of crypto wallet: ‘I know nothing about this project!’