Cancer Registration Statistics, England 2020

This bulletin reports on newly diagnosed cancers (malignant tumours) registered in the 2020 calendar year. Counts and rates are presented for England and the nine Government Office Regions, as well as by gender, age groups from under 1 to 90 years and older, Index of Multiple Deprivation quintile and stage at diagnosis. In addition, the data tables contain in-situ tumours and benign tumours for completeness.

Care should be taken when making comparisons between the historic and latest available data. Cancer registrations in England can take up to five 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 five years following later diagnostic testing. 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 twice in the incidence statistics; the progression or recurrence of previous cancer diagnoses are not counted as new diagnoses.

Cancer mortality estimates show the numbers of people who died as a result of cancer. It does not include people who were diagnosed with cancer but died from an unrelated cause of death.