The National Lung Cancer Audit (NLCA) evaluates how the care received by people diagnosed with lung cancer in England and Wales compares with recommended practice and provides information that supports healthcare providers, commissioners, and regulators to improve the care for patients.
The NLCA reports a set of process and outcome measures that cover important aspects of the care pathway for people diagnosed with lung cancer. In the NLCA State of the Nation report 2026, we give an overview of the patterns of care and outcomes for 39,409 people diagnosed with lung cancer in England in 2024. A separate section provides describes results for 2,135 people diagnosed in Wales in 2024.
A Methodology Supplement provides further information on the NLCA performance indicators.
There is also a version of this report for patients and the public.
The State of the Nation 2026 results for individual NHS providers in England and Wales can be accessed via an interactive web-based dashboard or downloaded as an Excel file of data tables. The data tables provide detailed information on the care received by people diagnosed in England and Wales in 2024.
Data source used in the State of the Nation report:
For people diagnosed in England, the datasets used to produce the information in the report are collated by the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS). For people diagnosed in Wales, the NLCA dataset is captured through a national system, Cancer Information System for Wales (CaNISC) and the new Welsh Clinical Portal called the Clinical Dataset Form (CDF).
The NLCA use data for English NHS trusts from the Rapid Cancer Registration Dataset (RCRD). This dataset is made available more quickly than the complete cancer registration dataset, but the speed of production means it does not have complete coverage of all people diagnosed with lung cancer in England during the reporting period. More information regarding the RCRD, can be found here.
The report allocates patients to English NHS organisations based on the “trust first seen”. The allocation of patients to NHS trusts is based on the best information available when the RCRD is produced; this can result in some misallocation of patients.