Expensive cancer drugs could be more readily available on the NHS after an advisory body said it would give guidance more quickly on which medicines should be provided.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) says it will be implementing guidelines next week to make it more flexible in its approach to the issuing of treatments which can prolong the life of people with terminal illnesses.

The watchdog, which uses independent committees of experts and public consultations to decide whether a medicine is cost-effective for use on the NHS, can currently take up to two years to approve a treatment after it is licensed in the UK.

But Sir Michael Rawlins, the institute’s chairman, has pledged to cut this evaluation time to six months.

“Our ambition is to make sure guidance is available within three to six months,” he told the BBC. This could be achieved by increasing the number of advisory committees and starting the evaluation process a year before a drug company expects to obtain a licence.

“We are putting these arrangements in hand. It won’t happen immediately, I’m afraid, because there is a backlog but we will be getting there within the next 12 to 18 months,” he added.

The measures were announced by Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, in July as part of a package of measures designed to widen access to new medicines on the NHS.

NICE had previously come under fire for refusing to approve some high-cost cancer treatments which can extend the lives of sufferers for weeks or months, meaning some patients were forced to pay privately for the drugs.

But Sir Michael said that the watchdog was consulting on proposals which would place more emphasis on the value of life-extending drugs for terminal conditions.

“We appreciate these extra weeks and months can be very special,” he said. “We are proposing to provide our advisory bodies with supplementary advice in these sort of circumstances which will have the effect of extending the threshold range of what we would normally regard as being cost-effective.”

NICE does not currently approve drugs that cost more than £30,000-£48,000 for a year of good quality life.

But for some cancer drugs that could offer patients a few more months, the ceiling will now be as high as £80,000 a year. The move opens the way for approval of treatments for kidney cancer which were provisionally rejected by NICE last year.

Sir Michael said that the new guidance, which will be issued on January 2 with immediate effect, would concentrate on treatments for less common cancers, but which affect at least 7,000 patients per year.

“We are not proposing to extend this to all conditions,” he added. “Frankly, it would cost the Health Service hundreds of millions of pounds if we were to do that.”

Pharmaceutical companies, he said, could be expected to lower the cost of drugs for more common conditions because they would get greater returns from the larger pool of patients.

On the NICE list

Rejected or awaiting approval

Lenalidomide (Revlimid) cancer of the bone marrow, £4,500 per month

Rituximab (Mabthera) Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, £5,000 per course

Sorafenib (Nexavar) kidney cancer, £2,000 per month

Source: Times database

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