Request

Could you please tell me the number of medical cannabis prescriptions issued by each named clinic in the UK over this period. Since it will be too much work to include all clinics which have small numbers of prescription, please just include the top 10 clinics in each year by volume of prescriptions. If naming the clinics is a breach of regulations, please anonymise them - e.g Clinic A, Clinic B, Clinic C, etc.

Date range: 1/1/2024 – 31/12/2025

Response

We hold prescribing information for NHS licensed cannabis-based medications prescribed in England. However, under section 21 of the FOIA we are not required to provide information in response to a request if it is already reasonably accessible to you.

This information is already publicly available on our English Prescribing Dataset (EPD) published on our Open Data Portal (ODP):

EPD: https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/english-prescribing-dataset-epd-with-snomed-code

ODP: https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/access-our-data-products/open-data-portal-odp.

The dataset provides monthly information on items prescribed in the community in England and dispensed in England, Wales, Scotland, Guernsey, Alderney, Jersey, and the Isle of Man.

NHS licensed cannabis-based medications included in the dataset are:

Nabilone

Sativex (Dronabinol/Cannabidiol)

Epidyolex (Cannabidiol)

To identify prescribing locations and volumes, you can use the dataset’s Add Filter function to select the relevant BNF Presentation Names and extract or aggregate the information for the period you are interested in.

Please see the following link to view section 21 in full: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/21

For private medical cannabis prescriptions, the clinic’s name may be detailed on the prescription images submitted to us. However, we do not routinely capture this information in a reportable format and would therefore need to manually review all private prescription images.

If the NHSBSA does hold the requested information, 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 would exceed the non-central Government limit of £450. The limit has been specified in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether we hold the information, and locating, retrieving, extracting and checking the information.

We received 3,709,803 private prescriptions between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2025. We estimate that it would take one minute to check 120 forms.

Please see the following calculations which sets out the estimated cost for compliance.:

3,709,803 forms checking two prescriptions per second equals 1,854,901 seconds, 30,915 minutes or 515.25 hours.

Please be advised that due to the way that we hold information, it is not possible to submit a refined request under the appropriate limit.

Please see the following link to view section 12 in full: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/12