Request

I am writing to request the following information please under the FOI Act:

• Number of prescriptions within Bristol for permethrin cream, totalled monthly from July 2023 - November 2024 inclusive

i.e.: July 2023: 326; August 2023: 289; etc

Response

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

The NHSBSA does hold the requested information; however, we consider that this information is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of FOIA. This provides an exemption from the duty to disclose information where this is reasonable accessible to an applicant by other means.

The data is available on the English Prescribing Data (EPD) accessible via the Open Data Portal (ODP):

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/english-prescribing-data-epd

Practice post codes, if you wish to use them, are shown in this dataset.

We do not hold cities as a geography in our data. The nearest we can get to narrowing down to a specific location would be to use post codes.   This is based on prescription items prescribed in the community in England and dispensed in England, Wales, Scotland, Guernsey, Alderney, Jersey, and the Isle of Man. From January 2014 onwards. It is presented monthly with the latest month September 2024.   Please see the following link to view the section 21 in full - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/21

Advice and Assistance

As this is a prescribed view, all generic prescribing is represented under the generic drug, not a brand. You need to be aware there is one branded version - Lyclear 5% dermal cream, which may have been prescribed in place of the generic Permethrin 5% cream.   By looking at individual months you can use a filter on BNF_DESCRIPTION and can search for the two presentations (if you want to include the brand), but the choice of post codes per month to represent Bristol would have to be up to you. The number of items will give you the number of prescriptions.