Request

You asked us:

Following receipt of my FOI request 02625 received in March 2025 I would like to request the same information for the period Jan 2025 to March 2025 by month. Please can you provide the information in the form of an Excel spreadsheet.

Response

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.

January 2025 and February 2025

The information you requested is available at the following link:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-02792

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

March 2025

A copy of this information is attached.

Unfortunately it is currently not possible to preview the March 2025 dataset on the Open Data Portal. We are in contact with our Data Services Support Team to determine the issue.

If you use “Explore” and “Download”, it will load the file to your computer direct.

We are working on some improvements to our portal at the moment, so please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused. There are some “How To” guides on the site, that may assist you, but please do not hesitate to contact the team with any other queries.

Please read the below notes to ensure 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 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 - The data source was the NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse.

Time Period - March 2025

Please note drugs flagged in our database as Schedule 2 and 3 controlled drugs have been excluded from this dataset for information security reasons to prevent the identification of organisations with high levels of controlled drug dispensing.

This data is limited to prescriptions prescribed in England and dispensed in either England, Scotland or Wales.

The dataset also excludes 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.