Thank you for your request for information about the following:

I am requesting the number of antibiotics that were prescribed in the last year for a project I am doing at the university of Bradford. I am wanting to see if there is a trend in the number of antibiotic prescriptions for each month.

Your request was received on 18 January 2024 and I am dealing with it under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Response

Under Section 21 of the Act, we are not required to provide information in response to a request if it is already reasonably accessible to you. The information you requested is available from web links, the datasets can be filtered on the required BNF:

For information on prescription items dispensed in the community in England which have been submitted to the NHSBSA for reimbursement.

Dataset: Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) Annual statistics
https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/prescription-cost-analysis-pca-annual-statistics

There is a Data Dictionary describing each column of data once you select a time period (at the bottom of the screen)

Dataset: Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) Monthly Administrative Data
https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/prescription-cost-analysis-pca-monthly-data

You can download BNF information from the Information Services Portal (ISP) to filter the above spreadsheets by the BNF code you are looking for.

https://applications.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/infosystems/welcome

This can be found under +Data, then Drug Data, then BNF Code Information.

For information on English prescribing data issued in England and dispensed in England, Wales, Scotland, Guernsey, Alderney, Jersey, and the Isle of Man.

Dataset: English Prescribing Dataset (EPD) https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/english-prescribing-data-epd