Statement regarding request for health data in Corby

26 September 2025

North Northamptonshire Council has been approached by a group of residents requesting information about the number of childhood cancer cases recorded for children living in Corby. They are interested in whether there are high rates of childhood cancer in Corby, and whether there are any areas within Corby that have particularly high rates.

The data that is needed to answer this question is collected by the NHS, and as a Public Health service we can request access to that data. The data itself is called Hospital Episodes Statistics, and it allows us to look at small areas of one to three thousand residents. These areas are called Local Super Output Areas (LSOAs). 

We have asked for data at this level for any cancer in a child aged 0-19 years and we have asked for that for all of the North Northamptonshire Council area. This will mean we can compare Corby and areas within Corby to the rest of North Northamptonshire. The NHS data can only be provided for up to a 10-year period, and so the analysis will cover any cancer in a child that was recorded between 2014 and 2024.

The data we receive is for hospital episodes and not for individual children and so we have had to carefully go through that data to identify and report individual cases. This is important as some children may have many hospital visits linked to their diagnosis and treatment, and some may have fewer.  By identifying individual children, we get a clearer picture of the number of cases of cancer. 

This process of verifying the data does take some time and it is also important that we check the data with our NHS partners to make sure we don’t miss any cases or count any more than once in error.  If the data are not correct, then the findings of the analysis could be misleading.

At the same time, we are also working with colleagues at the National Cancer Registry to see what other data could be made available to us, because this both  helps us check that our analysis of the Hospital Episode Statistics is  accurate, and helps us identify if there are other ways of identifying any clusters of cancer cases, should they exist.

When we have checked all the data, we will map the findings and look at whether there are any significant variations.  We will then share our findings initially with the residents who asked for this work to be done, and then we will share them publicly. 

We are at the stage of checking and verifying the data with our partners to make sure it is accurate and has captured all the individual cases of childhood cancer. It is very important that this is aspect of the work is done correctly, and we will be very rigorous in that process. It is also important to note that although this analysis will help to highlight any areas of variation in rates of childhood cancer, it will not identify the cause of any variation.      

North Northamptonshire Council acknowledge the devasting impact that childhood cancer has on children, their families and the local community. We are committed to doing all we can to respond to concerns raised by our residents.