Cancer Registration Statistics, England, 2021 - Full release

The counts and rates of cancer registration are designated as National Statistics. National Statistics are a subset of Official Statistics, which have been certified by the UK Statistics Authority as compliant with its code of practice for statistics.

This bulletin reports on registered diagnoses of cancers which were diagnosed in the 2021 calendar year. Counts are presented for England, the 21 Cancer Alliances and 42 Integrated Care Boards (these current geographies replace the previously published 9 former 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 (where a staging system exists). In addition, the data tables contain in-situ tumours and benign tumours for completeness (in Table 3 of the accompanying data release).  

Using the ICD-10 coding system, registerable diagnoses include cancers (C00.0 to C97), in situ tumours (D00.0 to D09.9), selected benign tumours (D32.0 to D33.9, D35.2 to D35.4), and tumours of uncertain or unknown behaviour (D37.0 to D48.9). Using ICD-O-3, some blood cancers are also now registerable, which correspond to the ICD-10 codes for amyloidosis (E85) and amyloidosis of skin (L99) .

For sub-national estimates, data is provided where a non-standardised (all age) rate can be reliably estimated in at least half the geographies for that combination of main and detailed cancer groups, gender, deprivation or stage. To avoid re-identification through slivers, an additional detailed cancer group will be suppressed as required.

From this publication onwards, diagnoses are presented both by ICD-10 codes and by main and detailed cancer groups (see the reported measures section for details) which use information on the type of cancer cells as well as their location in the body.

Care should be taken when making comparisons between the historic and latest available data. 

Cancer registrations in England can take up to 5 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 5 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 more than once in the incidence statistics; the progression or recurrence of previous cancer diagnoses are not counted as new diagnoses.