Rutherford Cancer Centre at Shinfield Set to Reopen

Icon Group plans to reopen the Shinfield cancer centre, shut since a winding-up order in June 2022. Up to 100 staff and 1.6m people in catchment, but no opening date.

The purpose-built cancer centre at Thames Valley Science Park in Shinfield, empty since its operator was wound up in June 2022, is to reopen.

Icon Group, an international oncology company, said on 11 August that it will bring three former Rutherford Health buildings back into use, in Bedlington, Newport and Shinfield. The Shinfield site will be called Icon Cancer Centre Thames Valley (Icon Cancer Centre UK).

The building is at 3 Collegiate Square, Shinfield, RG2 9LH. That is a Reading postal address, but the site sits in Wokingham borough, about three miles south-east of Reading town centre. It stands on Thames Valley Science Park, which is wholly owned and managed by the University of Reading. Two buses already stop outside the park’s Gateway building: the leopard 3 from Station Road, stop SA, and the Mereoak park and ride 600 from stop SD, both towards Shinfield (Thames Valley Science Park).

What Icon says it will provide

The company describes the plan as a multi-million-pound investment. It has not published a figure, and it has not given an opening date.

Across the three centres, Icon says it will offer:

radiotherapy, including stereotactic radiotherapy
systemic anti-cancer therapy, covering chemotherapy, immunotherapy and targeted therapy
imaging
consulting services

It puts the combined capacity of the three centres at “more than 1,500 patients a year”, delivered by teams of “up to 100 professionals” each, across radiotherapy, radiography, medical physics, oncology nursing, pharmacy and administration.

The Shinfield centre is described as serving “a general population catchment of around 1.6 million people across the Thames Valley”. The company says the centres will support NHS systems as well as private patients.

Group chief executive Mark Middleton said: “These three centres represent an opportunity to restore critical cancer infrastructure and ensure it delivers sustainable, high-quality care for the communities that depend on it.”

Dr Penny Kechagioglou, chief medical officer of Icon Cancer Centre UK, said radiotherapy is “a vital part of cancer treatment but underutilised in the UK”.

What the announcement does not say

Three gaps are worth naming, because they decide when this matters to a patient rather than to a press release.

There is no opening date. Icon’s statement talks about plans and refurbishment, not a month or a quarter.

There is no proton beam therapy in the list. The building was designed for it. The engineering consultancy on the project, Fairhurst, describes the centre as containing “proton beam therapy, a linear accelerator as well as a CT (Computed Tomography) Suite and an MRI”, and the scheme won the RICS South East award for design through innovation in 2019 (Fairhurst). Icon’s announcement lists radiotherapy, stereotactic radiotherapy, external beam radiotherapy, AI-assisted planning and surface guided radiotherapy. Proton beam therapy is not mentioned anywhere in it.

It is not yet registered to treat anyone. The Care Quality Commission register still carries the site as “The Rutherford Cancer Centre Thames Valley”, 3 Collegiate Square, Shinfield, and marks it archived (CQC). A provider has to be registered with the CQC before it can deliver regulated activities. Nothing on the register has changed yet.

How the building came to be empty

The centre’s operating company was Rutherford Cancer Care Limited, company number 10680302, registered in Hereford.

The High Court made a winding-up order against it on 13 June 2022, on a petition filed the same day. The Official Receiver was appointed liquidator. The order was published in The London Gazette on 20 June 2022 (notice 4096961).

That is four years and two months from the winding-up order to Icon’s announcement. The building has stood unused for almost all of it.

The winding-up order was made on the day the petition was filed. Icon has not said when the centre will treat its first patient.

What it means for you

Nothing changes for an NHS cancer patient in Reading today. If you are being treated now, your appointments are unaffected by this.

NHS radiotherapy and chemotherapy for this area are delivered by the Berkshire Cancer Centre at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, with further radiotherapy at the Royal Berkshire Bracknell Clinic. The trust says the centre serves patients across Berkshire and parts of south Oxfordshire, and lists four linear accelerators across the two sites (Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust).

If the Shinfield centre opens as described, it would add radiotherapy capacity three miles from the town on a site that already has it built in. Icon says it wants to work with the NHS as well as private patients, but no NHS contract or referral route has been announced, and there is no date.

Two things to watch, both public:

The CQC register. A new registration for the Shinfield address is the first hard signal that an opening is close. Until it appears, no one can be treated there.
Recruitment. Icon says each centre needs up to 100 staff. Job adverts for Shinfield would come well before any opening.

We will follow both. Reading Borough Council has no role in this: the site is in Wokingham borough, so any planning matters go to Wokingham Borough Council.