Request

You asked us:

I am writing to request a record of national NHS propranolol prescriptions in all NHS trusts across NHS England, Scotland, Wales and Health and Social Care (Northern Ireland).

I wish to have an electronic data set of the past five years of prescription rates, how many patients have been prescribed the drug, at what dose and broken down into each NHS England/NHS Scotland/NHS Wales and Health and Social Care (NI). 

I would like to focus on the age group of female NHS patients aged 12 – 17, 18 – 23 and 24 – 29.

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 23 October 2025.

You further clarified on the 30 October 2025:

Thank you for your response and follow up questions.

I am seeking data covering all English prescribing data available, to understand change over time in propranolol prescriptions in hospitals and community prescribing. I understand this includes England, Wales, Scotland, Guernsey, Alderney, Jersey, and the Isle of Man. 

Data provided in total quantities at the BNF presentation level would also be most helpful for this request. 

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 and notes explaining it 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 2020-August 2025 (currently the latest month for which prescribing data is available). Data is aggregated by calendar year/part calendar year. 

Organisation Data 

The data is for items prescribed in England regardless of where dispensed in the community and includes the country in which the prescriptions were dispensed. 

Data 

This dataset is limited to the prescribing of BNF chemical substance propranolol hydrochloride (BNF code 0204000R0), at BNF presentation level, including the number of female unique identified patients (within the age bands indicated), the number of items prescribed and the total quantity.  

There was no prescribing for the BNF chemical substance propranolol hydrochloride with diuretic (BNF code 0204000Q0). 

BNF 

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. The majority of such items are dressings and appliances which NHS Prescription Services has classified into four pseudo BNF chapters (20 to 23).  

Patient Age 

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 identified female patients aged between 12-17, 18-23 and 24-29. 

Not all patient’s age can be captured and therefore cannot be allocated to an age band. The NHSBSA does not validate, verify or manually check the resulting information as part of the routine prescription processing. 

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 limited to female.  

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 nhs number) was available for 99.44% of prescription items. 

Total Quantity 

Total quantity is the number of items multiplied by the quantity prescribed. e.g. 2 items prescribed, one with a quantity of 2 and one with a quantity of 3, the total quantity would show as 5 (1 item x quantity of 2) + (1 item x quantity of 3). 

Items 

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

For prescriptions prescribed and dispensed in prisons or hospitals I believe that it is possible that NHS England or each Integrated Care Board (ICB) may hold some or all of the information you require. They can be contacted at:

Integrated Care Board (ICB) 

Find your local integrated care board (ICB) - NHS

NHS England 

NHS England

PO Box 16738

Redditch

B97 9PT

Telephone 0300 311 22 33

Email: england.contactus@nhs.net

Web http://www.england.nhs.uk/contact-us/foi/

Following a search of our paper and electronic records, I have established that the information you requested for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is not held by the NHS Business Services Authority. We only hold information for England. For details of other home countries please use the following contacts.

Information for Scotland can be obtained by contacting: 

Customer Service Desk

NHS National Services Scotland

Gyle Square

1 South Gyle Crescent

Edinburgh

EH12 9EB

Tel: 0131 275 6665

Email: PHS.FOI@phs.scot

Website: Public Health Scotland

Web form Your FOI request - Freedom of Information (FOI) and Environmental Information Regulation (EIR) requests - Contact us - Public Health ScotlandFOISA Disclosure log Freedom of Information request log - Freedom of Information (FOI) and Environmental Information Regulation (EIR) requests - Contact us - Public Health Scotland

Information for Wales can be obtained by contacting: 

NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership

Freedom of Information Requests

NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership,

4-5 Charnwood Court,

Heol Billingsley,

Parc Nantgarw,

Cardiff

CF15 7QZ

E-mail: shared.services@wales.nhs.uk

Information for Northern Ireland can be obtained by contacting: 

Corporate Services Department

HSC Business Services Organisation

2 Franklin Street

Belfast

BT2 8DQ

Tel: 028 9032 4431

Website: http://www.hscbusiness.hscni.net/

Email Foi.bso@hscni.net

FOI Disclosure log FOI Disclosure Logs - Business Services Organisation (BSO) Website

Publishing this response 

Please note that this information will be published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-03301

Your personal details will be removed from the published response.

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 2025”. 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.