City Hall staff are to be given access to private mammograms after concerns grew about the NHS’s breast screening programme in London.
The benefit, which had been withdrawn a couple of years ago, was reinstated alongside a pay rise after some Greater London Authority employees said they had found it “very difficult” to get appointments.
The charity Breast Cancer Now says breast screening in London is in “crisis”, with only 50 per cent of women coming forward for routine checks – dropping to a “deeply concerning” 35 per cent for first invitations.
A GLA spokesman said: “Following negotiations with Unison, the GLA has reinstated access to private mammograms for eligible employees over the age of 40 as part of its support for staff financial and physical wellbeing.
“This has been reintroduced as the GLA is aware that some staff have found it very difficult to access these important checks.”
Mayor Sadiq Khan has set aside £6m for the annual pay rise, which gives the lowest paid staff of City Hall’s 1,000-plus employees an eight per cent hike, and those on the largest salaries 4.5 per cent.
The NHS breast screening programme invites women aged 50 to 70 to undergo screening every three years.
Last year it sent out more than three million invitations across the country – of which two million were taken up.
In London, uptake has fallen from 64 per cent to 50 per cent in the last four years. The capital was the only region not to see an increase in screening as the pandemic eased.
Almost 270,000 London women were screened in 2021/22, of which 11,200 were referred for assessment. About nine women of every 1,000 screened are found to have cancer.
Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive of Breast Cancer Now, said: “Breast screening is a vital tool for detecting breast cancer early and this is crucial as the sooner it’s diagnosed the better the chance of treatment being successful.
“Once an NHS success story, the Breast Screening Programme is now chronically underfunded and overstretched.
“Women have the right to access breast screening that could save their lives from breast cancer. But increasingly, access is being undermined.”
Apart from high risk groups, breast screening is not recommended for women under 50 due to the difficulty of reading scans.
A woman’s risk of getting breast cancer increases with age, with about four in five breast cancers found in women over 50.
More than nine in 10 women whose breast cancer is diagnosed at an early stage live more than five years.
According to Cancer Research UK, there is little evidence to show that regular mammograms for women below the screening age would reduce deaths from breast cancer.
The GLA said access to private mammograms was being reinstated from this month for “all eligible employees” aged 40 or older.
Following “medical guidance from the private provider”, this will recommend annual screening for staff aged 40 to 47 and screening every two years for those older than 47.
Eligible GLA staff include transgender women who have breast tissue as a result of taking hormones, transgender men who have not undergone mastectomy and non-binary people with breast tissue suitable for a mammogram to take place.
