Last month I launched my campaign to improve local cancer services. I had a huge response so thank you very much to everyone who responded.

To expand cancer provision locally at the same time as dealing with the backlog created by the pandemic will be extremely challenging – but it is a challenge I know our local NHS is up for.

Thanks to your response to the survey the NHS also knows how much support there is for it in the local community. Almost unanimously people said they were supportive of the Royal Surrey’s objective to become a regional breast and skin reconstruction hub, to build a dedicated surgical short-stay unit and to recruit additional radiology and endoscopy staff.

A massive 90 per cent of you who had received cancer treatment rated your experience as good or outstanding, which is encouraging and backs up what most of us already know – we have fantastic hospitals locally who do amazing work. Around one in ten did not have a good experience and I know their comments will be taken very seriously.

Whilst the majority did not experience delays to their cancer care in the last year, it was worrying that about one in six respondents did. This is the case all over the country and demonstrates how challenging the next few months are going to be for cancer care.

There was, however, a high level of confidence in the ambition to detect more cancers at stages one and two.

To achieve this, we all need to play our part by making sure our cancer screening is up to date.

Around two thirds of you indicated that your cervical, breast and bowel screening tests were – but this dropped to about half for aneurism screening. Please do talk to your GP if you think you are behind.

Since launching the campaign, I have met with The Royal Surrey County Hospital’s chief executive, Louise Stead to discuss next steps. I have also met Professor Chris Marks who worked as a consultant at the Royal Surrey all his life and led the ‘Save the Royal Surrey’ campaign with me and Anne Milton back in 2007.

The hospital is now putting together detailed plans as to what it needs to do next, not least so we can work out how best to help with fundraising. I will be talking to Neil Dardis, chief executive of Frimley Health (which includes Frimley Park) about the same issues soon.

I will also be holding a public meeting on July 2. I am hopeful this can be in person and that those of you who want to attend can do so but it may end up being virtual or a hybrid. I will do what I can to make sure as many people can attend and will announce more details nearer the time.

But in the meantime, thank you again for supporting this very important campaign.