Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Request

‘Data on NHS statin prescriptions, annually, over the past ten years, by age, in children under 18 in England’

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 24 July 2025.

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

Our response

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

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

Data in ePACT2 is sourced from the NHSBSA Information Services Data Warehouse and is derived from products prescribed on prescriptions and dispensed in the Community. The data captured from prescription processing is used to calculate reimbursement and remuneration. It includes items prescribed in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Guernsey / Alderney, Jersey and Isle of Man which have been dispensed in the community in England. English prescribing that has been dispensed in Wales, Scotland, Guernsey / Alderney, Jersey and Isle of Man is also included.

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.

This dataset

The data indicates the number of Statins items, and their associated Net Ingredient Cost, prescribed to patients aged Under 18. The data is aggregated by the patient’s individual recorded age per calendar year.

Chemical Substances included within the data are as follows;

Atorvastatin (0212000B0)

Fluvastatin Sodium (0212000M0)

Pravastatin sodium (0212000X0)

Rosuvastatin calcium (0212000AA)

Simvastatin (0212000Y0)

Simvastatin and ezetimibe (0212000AC)

Cerivastatin (0212000C0) – has no data within this dataset

Fenofibrate/Simvastatin (0212000AJ) – has no data within this dataset

Time Period

April 2015 to May 2025 (the latest month for which prescribing data is currently available). Data is aggregated by calendar year/part year.

Patient level data is only available from April 2015.

Organisation Data

The data includes prescriptions prescribed in England and dispensed anywhere in the UK.

Patient Identification

Where patient identifiable figures have been reported they are based on the information captured during the prescription processing activities.  Please note, patient details cannot be captured from every prescription form.

The patient count figures are based on a distinct count of NHS number as captured from the prescription image. 

Patient ages are based on the age as captured from the prescription image and relates to the patient's age at the time of prescribing. 

Data Quality for patient ages

NHSBSA stores information on the age of the recipient of each prescription as it was read by computer from images of paper prescriptions or as attached to messages sent through the electronic prescription system.

The NHSBSA does not validate, verify or manually check the resulting information as part of the routine prescription processing. However, an additional check is carried out on a yearly basis to check the capture rate and accuracy of the stored patient information.

There may be some data quality issues with the ages of patients prescribed the products requested in this FOI. The NHSBSA holds prescription images for 18 months. A sample of the data was compared to the images of the paper prescription forms from which the data was generated where these images are still available. These checks revealed issues in the reliability of age data in particular the quality of the stored age data was poor for patients recorded as aged 2 years and under. When considering the accuracy of age data, it is expected that a small number of prescriptions may be allocated against any given patient age incorrectly.

Items

Shows the number of times a product appears on a prescription form not the quantity prescribed. 

Net Ingredient cost (NIC)

The basic price of a drug as stated in Part II Clause 8 of the Drug Tariff but please note that where a price concession for items listed in Part VIII of the Drug Tariff has been agreed between the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Community Pharmacy England the NIC will reflect the concession price rather than the Drug Tariff price. 

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: “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.