Request

You asked us:

I know that in England an individual prescription costs you £9.90 and you can get a PPC for 12 months that works out at £114.50.

This means that if you buy 12 items individually, you could have saved with a PPC.

a) Can you tell me for the 2024/25 tax year, how many people bought 12 items or more individually and what the average number of items bought was amongst people who bought 12 or more. Can you also tell me the number of people that bought 20 or more items and the number that bought 50 or more.

b) Can you tell me for the 2023/24 tax year, how many people bought 12 items or more individually and what the average number of items bought was amongst people who bought 12 or more. Can you also tell me the number of people that bought 20 or more items and the number that bought 50 or more.

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 10 April 2025.

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

Our response

March 2025 data

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

We do hold the requested information; however, we estimate that the cost of compliance with the request would exceed the appropriate limit under FOIA Section 12.

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 The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. It represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) holds the information, and locating, retrieving, extracting and checking said information.

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

• the data we hold for March 2025 is not held in an accessible format. • the activity of processing prescriptions takes approximately seven weeks. Pharmacists formally submit their electronic prescriptions in the six days after month-end and then bundle up their paper prescriptions. They then send them to us for scanning and inputting through an OCR engine. Once everything is in an electronic format, the prescriptions are validated and sent back for clarifications where required. It then all goes through the pricing engine and uploaded into the data warehouse where we then refer to it as "processed".

We are therefore unable to answer any FOI requests relating to this data before it is processed.

Remaining information

I can confirm that we hold the information you have requested, and a copy of the information is attached.

Please read the notes to ensure your correct understanding of the data.

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 one 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

The data source was the NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse.

Time Period

April 2024 to February 2025, presented as financial years.

Our data is only currently available up to February 2025, so the 2024/25 financial year shown is not a complete financial year.

Organisation Data

The data provided is for prescriptions dispensed in England.

Identified Patients

Prescriptions are only included if an NHS Number has been captured during NHSBSA processing.

Items

Only items with a charge status payable at either the current or previous rate have been included in the dataset.

The dataset also includes items supplied as part of a Pharmacy First consultation or service.

Exclusions

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.

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: “Data Warehouse, 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.