New data from CoppaFeel!, the UK’s only breast cancer awareness charity for young people, has revealed the hotspots across the UK where people under 50 are more likely to get diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer.

According to the data, Birmingham and Solihull, Coventry & Warwickshire and the Black Country are all among the hotspots, with young people more than four times as likely to be diagnosed late (stage 3 or 4) in Birmingham & Solihull than someone in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly: 30% of diagnoses, compared to 7%. Late diagnosis is directly linked to survival, with those diagnosed with breast cancer at stage 1 and 2 more likely to survive five years or more.

Sophie Dopierala-Bull, Director of Services and Engagement, CoppaFeel!, said that the number of women under 50 receiving a late-stage diagnosis remains "unacceptably high" across large swathes of the UK and reflects wider systemic gaps in early detection and awareness for younger people."Breast cancer is still treated too much like an older person’s disease with women telling us they are dismissed as ‘too young’ when they first ask for help. Every late diagnosis represents a missed opportunity to treat the cancer before it spreads and becomes more difficult to treat.

Sarah Wallace, 48 years old from Solihull, was diagnosed with a rare type of fast-growing breast cancer in January 2025. She started chemotherapy, but unfortunately it did not work, so a few months later, she started immunotherapy. But she had a severe reaction to the treatment and ended up in hospital. A PET scan in the hospital revealed that the tumour had grown from 4 cms to 14 cms into her chest wall, requiring emergency surgery to remove the tumour.

Sarah spent three weeks in intensive care and ended up having 40 hours of surgery to save her life.Sarah is now recovering and rebuilding her life, but says her story demonstrates the need for breast cancer detection and diagnosis to be improved. "I had cysts ten years earlier that were benign, so I thought the lump was similar. People think that lumps have to be hard to be cancer and mine wasn’t. Even the doctors didn't think it was breast cancer either. It lost me so much time.

Sarah Hughes, Managing Director of West Midlands Cancer Alliance said: "Cancer is no respecter of age, and a very significant number of women aged under 50 are diagnosed with breast cancer every day, and it is the leading cause of cancer related deaths in women aged 25 to 49.

"We will continue to work with our partners in the voluntary sector and throughout the NHS in the West Midlands to improve rates of early diagnosis in people of all ages, and encourage everyone to be aware of the signs and symptoms of breast cancer."

You can find an interactive map showing the late diagnosis hotspots on Coppafeel's wewbsite.