Request

You asked us:

Please can I request the following,

Total dispensed prescribing spend as per the English Prescribing Dataset

For England as a total and for each BNF Chapter.

For the month of January 26 (As provided for previous months in FOI – 03574)

Split by Male / Female and by 5 year age bands as below:

FEMALE - 0_4

FEMALE - 5_9

FEMALE - 10_14

FEMALE - 15_19

FEMALE - 20_24

FEMALE - 25_29

FEMALE - 30_34

FEMALE - 35_39

FEMALE - 40_44

FEMALE - 45_49

FEMALE - 50_54

FEMALE - 55_59

FEMALE - 60_64

FEMALE - 65_69

FEMALE - 70_74

FEMALE - 75_79

FEMALE - 80_84

FEMALE - 85_89

FEMALE - 90_94

FEMALE - 95+

MALE - 0_4

MALE - 5_9

MALE - 10_14

MALE - 15_19

MALE - 20_24

MALE - 25_29

MALE - 30_34

MALE - 35_39

MALE - 40_44

MALE - 45_49

MALE - 50_54

MALE - 55_59

MALE - 60_64

MALE - 65_69

MALE - 70_74

MALE - 75_79

MALE - 80_84

MALE - 85_89

MALE - 90_94

MALE - 95+

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 24 March 2026.

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000.

Our response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information is attached.

Please read the below notes to ensure correct understanding of the data.

NHSBSA

NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for Pharmacy Contractors, Appliance Contractors, Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration). This involves processing over 1 billion prescription items and payments totalling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care users.

Data Source: ePACT2

Data in ePACT2 is sourced from the NHSBSA Data Warehouse and is derived from products prescribed on prescriptions and dispensed in the Community. The data captured from prescription processing is used to calculate reimbursement and remuneration. It includes items prescribed in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Guernsey / Alderney, Jersey, and Isle of Man which have been dispensed in the community in England. English prescribing that has been dispensed in Wales, Scotland, Guernsey / Alderney, Jersey, and Isle of Man is also included.

The Data excludes:

• items not dispensed, disallowed and those returned to the contractor for further clarification
• prescriptions prescribed and dispensed in Prisons, Hospitals and Private prescriptions
• items prescribed but not presented for dispensing or not submitted to NHS Prescription Services by the dispenser

Time Period:

January 2026

Data:

Please note that the data is provided in two parts for this FOI.

FOI_03699_NATIONAL - indicates the data aggregated by patient age and gender, per month.

FOI_03699_BNF_CHAPTER - indicates the data aggregated by patient age, gender and BNF Chapter.

This dataset is limited to items prescribed in England and to patients specifically identified as male or female. Items prescribed to patients where gender is recorded as Not Known or Indeterminate have not been included within the data.

BNF Code:

The BNF Code is a 15-digit code in which the first seven digits are allocated according to the categories in the BNF, and the last 8 digits represent the medicinal product, form, strength and the link to the generic equivalent product. NHS Prescription Services has created pseudo BNF chapters, which are not published, for items not included in BNF chapters 1 to 15. Most of these items are dressings and appliances which NHS Prescription Services has classified into four pseudo BNF chapters (20 to 23).

Items:

Shows the number of times a product appears on a prescription form not the quantity prescribed.

Net Ingredient Cost (NIC):

Net Ingredient cost (NIC) is the basic price of a drug as stated in Part II Clause 8 of the Drug Tariff but please note that where a price concession for items listed in Part VIII of the Drug Tariff has been agreed between the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Community Pharmacy England the NIC will reflect the concession price rather than the Drug Tariff price.

Actual Cost:

Prior to April 2024, the actual cost is the basic price of the drug less relevant Discount plus Payment for Consumables (previously known as container allowance), Out of Pocket Expenses and Payment for Containers (10p for splitting packs).

Post April 2024, Actual Cost is based on the Net Ingredient Cost of the item(s) supplied, less the appropriate discount rate of the prescribed product plus Payment for Consumables, Out of Pocket Expenses and Payment for Containers

Gender:

Patient gender has been reported using the latest patient gender information held by the NHSBSA Information Services data warehouse at the time that the data was extracted. This uses information from either the most recent Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) message or from the last time that NHSBSA received data about the patient's gender from NHS Personal Demographics Service.

Gender is either: Male, Female, Not Known (where no information is held) or Indeterminate (where information is held which does not confirm either Male or Female).

Please note that data relating to patients identified as Male or Female have been included within this FOI.

Patient Identification:

Where patient identifiable figures have been reported they are based on the information captured during the prescription processing activities. Please note, patient details cannot be captured from every prescription form and based on the criteria used for this analysis, patient information (age and gender) was only available for 99.99% of prescription items.

Patient ages are based on the age as captured from the prescription image and relates to the patient's age at the time of prescribing/dispensing. Results have been restricted to only show results for patients within 5-year age bands.

Data Queries

Please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference if you have any specific questions regarding this response; or, if you feel you may be misunderstanding or misinterpreting the information; or, if you plan on publishing the data.

Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: ePACT2, NHSBSA Copyright 2026. Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.