NHS Breast Screening Programme, England 2020-21

This publication presents information about the NHS Breast Screening Programme (‘the programme’) in England in 2020-21. It reports on women who are invited for regular screening, presenting information on coverage, overall screening activity, invitation uptake, screening outcomes and cancers detected.

Under the programme, women from the age of 50 to their 71st birthday (50-<71) are invited for regular breast screening every 3 years. The intention of the screening is to detect breast cancer at an early stage when there is a better chance of successful treatment.

In some circumstances, women outside of this age range are also screened as part of the programme either through self / general practitioner (GP) referral, or they may be invited as part of a research trial. Women at very high risk of breast cancer are treated separately, their data are reported in section 7 of this report.

In 2020-21 the NHS Breast Screening Programme was significantly impacted by disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic. See COVID impact summary for details.
Data collection and validation processes were completed as normal, therefore, the accuracy and reliability of the statistics published in this report are of a comparable standard to previous years.