Key Summary
- The government has announced £237 million to open or upgrade 36 CDCs, aimed at catching diseases earlier and reducing hospital waiting times.
- NHS in England carried out record 29 million diagnostic tests in 2025.
- The funding is part of the extra £26 billion a year this government is investing in the NHS.
The government has announced investment of £237 million to set up 36 new and expanded Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs), which will provide people an easy access to tests, checks and scans, and reduce their need to travel to hospitals.
The funding is part of the extra £26 billion a year this government is investing in the NHS.
Four new CDCs, all equipped with state-of-the-art facilities, will open in Gorton, Luton, Boston and Bideford during 2026 and 2027.
A further 32 centres will be expanded and improved with new scanning equipment, outpatient clinic space and additional testing facilities.
Of these, 17 will be physically expanded with new rooms and state-of-the-art scanning and diagnostic equipment - such as MRI, CT and ultrasound scanners - significantly increasing the range and volume of tests they can offer.
Another 15 will receive targeted enhancements, adding specialist kit, new clinic rooms or additional services such as audiology, ophthalmology and respiratory care to existing facilities.
Regarding the investment, health secretary Wes Streeting said, “I was one of the lucky ones - my kidney cancer was caught early, and today I’m living cancer-free. But it shouldn’t be a question of luck. The NHS should be there for all of us when we need it, catching illness earlier so we can treat it faster.
Professor Stella Vig, National Clinical Director for Elective Care at NHS England, said: “We’re making it easier to access care, and our network of Community Diagnostic Centres deliver important diagnostic tests nearer to people’s homes, with new, expanded or enhanced centres available to patients across England.
“This expansion means even more patients can have vital checks like MRIs, CT scans and ultrasounds in a convenient location at a time that suits them, supporting the NHS’s drive to bring down waiting times even further.”
In 2025, the NHS in England carried out a record number of key diagnostic tests of almost 30 million.
Additionally, it has delivered about 3.5 million more tests in the first 18 months of the Labour government compared to the 18 months prior to July 2024.
