Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Request

‘Please can I request an update to FOI-03609, for the same query but to reflect the next data month available - that is, January 2026 (Year_Month 202601)

I am looking to ascertain the number of monthly prescription items, cost and quantity of each medicine included in list A (below), that are being prescribed to patients who are not also in receipt of any of the medicines from the group defined in list B (also below).

This information at a national (England) level would be most useful. Secondly, I would also like the information at ICB level.

List A: medicines with the following BNFID prefixes 0601023AB*, 0601023AI*, 0601023AQ*, 0601023AS*, 0601023AW*, 0601023AZ*, 0601023Y0*, ie: 0601023ABAAAAAA 0601023ABBBAAAA 0601023ABBCAAAA 0601023AIAAAAAA 0601023AIAAABAB 0601023AIAAACAC 0601023AIBBAAAA 0601023AIBBABAB 0601023AIBBACAC 0601023AQAAAAAA 0601023AQAAABAB 0601023AQAAACAC 0601023AQAAADAD 0601023AQBBAAAA 0601023AQBBABAB 0601023AQBBACAC 0601023AQBBADAD 0601023ASAAAAAA 0601023ASAAABAB 0601023ASBBAAAA 0601023ASBBABAB 0601023AWAAAAAA 0601023AWAAABAB 0601023AWAAACAC 0601023AWAAADAD 0601023AWAAAEAE 0601023AWAAAFAF 0601023AWAAAGAG 0601023AWAAAHAH 0601023AWAAAIAI 0601023AWBBAAAA 0601023AWBBABAB 0601023AWBBACAC 0601023AWBCAAAD 0601023AWBCABAE 0601023AWBCACAF 0601023AWBDAAAB 0601023AWBDABAG 0601023AWBDACAH 0601023AWBDADAI 0601023AWBDAEAJ 0601023AZAAAAAA 0601023AZAAABAB 0601023Y0AAAAAA 0601023Y0AAABAB 0601023Y0AAACAC 0601023Y0AAADAD 0601023Y0AAAEAE 0601023Y0BBAAAA 0601023Y0BBABAB 0601023Y0BCAAAC 0601023Y0BCABAD 0601023Y0BCACAE

List B: List B - medicines with any of the following BNFID prefixes: Note 0601011 7-digit 0601012 7-digit 0601021 7-digit 0601022 7-digit 0601040 7-digit 0601023B 8-digit 0601023I 8-digit 0601023R 8-digit 0601023S 8-digit 0601023U 8-digit 0601023V 8-digit 0601023W 8-digit 0601023X 8-digit 0601023Z 8-digit 0601023A0 9-digit 0601023AA 9-digit 0601023AC 9-digit 0601023AD 9-digit 0601023AE 9-digit 0601023AF 9-digit 0601023AG 9-digit 0601023AH 9-digit 0601023AJ 9-digit 0601023AK 9-digit 0601023AL 9-digit 0601023AM 9-digit 0601023AN 9-digit 0601023AP 9-digit 0601023AR 9-digit 0601023AU 9-digit 0601023AV 9-digit 0601023AX 9-digit 0601023AY 9-digit'

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 16 March 2026.

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

Our response

We have considered this request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and are issuing a refusal notice under section 17 of the FOIA.

The NHSBSA does hold the requested information; however, we estimate that the cost of compliance with the request would exceed the appropriate limit under section 12 of the FOIA.

We estimate that the cost of complying with your request at this time would exceed the non-central Government limit of £450. The limit has been specified in https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244/contents/made and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the NHSBSA holds the information, and locating, retrieving, extracting and checking the information.

We have determined that the cost of compliance would exceed the non-central government limit for the following reasons:

• While the information for January of 2026 is held by the NHSBSA, it is not held in an accessible format.

• Pharmacists formally submit their electronic prescriptions in the 6 days after month end and also bundle up their paper prescriptions and send them to the NHSBSA for scanning and putting through an OCR engine. Once everything is in an electronic format it is validated, sent back for clarifications where required, and then it all goes through the pricing engine and finally uploaded into the data warehouse (we then refer to it as "processed"). This process takes approximately 7 weeks.

The NHSBSA is therefore unable to answer any FOI requests relating to this data before it is processed.

Advice and assistance

The NHSBSA publishes a data release calendar, available from the following link https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/data-release-calendar, which indicates when information is planned to be available.

In line with this published schedule, we would therefore advise that you resubmit your request after 20 March 2026.

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: “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.