Teenage Cancer Trust has announced it intends to spend the £5m raised by Stephen Sutton to fund new specialist cancer units, train more researchers, and enable more young people than ever to benefit from its services.

The charity has announced that Stephen’s story, which saw him blog and tweet about his bucket list right up to just before his death from bowel cancer in May this year, inspired more than 340,000 donations which will be spent on key areas of its work.

The charity has also said that it will continue to work with Stephen’s family to run the Stephen’s Story Fund so that those inspired by Stephen can continue to raise money for Teenage Cancer Trust in his name.

Siobhan Dunn, chief executive of Teenage Cancer Trust, said: “Stephen trusted us to spend the money well and to ‘keep doing what we do’ and this is reflected in our plans. However, Stephen has also allowed us to be more ambitious and we will do more in the next five years than ever before.

“Stephen’s Story will help us reach some huge milestones for young people with cancer across the UK but we know that for every young person we can help, there’s another we can’t so there remains much more to do. Stephen’s gift to a charity of our size is more than money – the awareness raised of cancer in young people and new supporters inspired by Stephen will be essential if we are to help every young person with cancer who needs us.”

The £5m raised, which came from a combination of online, text and postal donations including the gift aid total, will be spent on four key areas of Teenage Cancer Trust’s work.

The charity will invest £2.9m in specialist cancer units, which will involve building or improving eight Teenage Cancer Trust units for young people across seven cities. This will include investment in two brand new units and six current units in need of refurbishment or replacement.

It will also invest £1.2m in supporting vital research and training professionals who work with teenagers and young adults with cancer. This will include funding for Stephen Sutton Scholarships for the Postgraduate Certificate in Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Care at Coventry University over five years, in recognition of Stephen’s ambition to have a medical career.

A further £500,000 will be invested in information services about cancer for young patients, including in a new digital platform to help young people easily find all the information they need to know about cancer.

Another £200,000 will be spent on helping patients attend Teenage Cancer Trust’s own event ‘Find Your Sense of Tumour’, a weekend conference which brings young people with cancer together. Stephen had stated that this event played a huge role in how he viewed cancer.

The charity said that for the first time it’ll be able to pay the travel costs for 1,500 patients to attend the event over the next five years.

In 2012/13, Teenage Cancer Trust's income for the whole year was £13.5m.

Special Achievement Award

Stephen, who was recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June this year, has also been honoured a posthumous Special Achievement Award for his charity work at the National Lottery Awards.

He was recognised for his National Good Gestures Day campaign which he was involved in with Lottery-funded charity Fixers. Stephen was one of 13,000 ‘Fixers’, young people who use their own life experiences to ‘fix’ or change the future for themselves and others.

The award was presented by host John Barrowman to Stephen’s mother and brother. Comedian Jason Manford, who famously supported Stephen’s story, narrated a tribute to him at the event.

The awards ceremony will be broadcast on National Lottery Stars, which will be shown on BBC One at 10.35pm on Friday 19 September.