Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Request

‘I made a Freedom of Information request asking for five years of NHS penalty charge case data. You responded with a vague spreadsheet showing general statistics.

This is not acceptable under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. You hold more detailed information, and I am legally entitled to access it — provided it is anonymised.

I am requesting a case-level dataset showing:

• The type of case (prescription, dental, etc.)

• The date the fine was issued

• Whether any exemption was claimed

• Whether evidence was provided

• Whether the fine was appealed

• The outcome of the appeal

• The final status of the case (paid, cancelled, escalated)

I do not require personally identifiable information, and you are expected to redact such details in line with Section 40(2) of the FOI Act. The rest of the information must be disclosed.

In plain terms:

I want to see a trace of how each case progressed through your system — what was allowed, what was overturned, what went to appeal, what got blocked, and what was escalated. That is the only way for the public to understand the fairness, failure rate, and consistency of your enforcement process.’

[On 8 August 2025 we sent you the following clarification request]

‘Please can you confirm if you require the data in calendar years or financial years?

I have also provided some additional information regarding your request below which may result in you preferring to change your request.

The type of case (prescription, dental, etc.)

We can provide this information.

The date the fine was issued

We can provide this information; however, please note that there will be roughly 2 million rows of data for prescriptions and roughly 650,000 rows of data for dental.

Whether any exemption was claimed

All checks will show that some exemption has been claimed.

Whether evidence was provided

No evidence is required for the automated check. If this refers to evidence being provided for appeals or challenges, we will need to manually interrogate each record to see if evidence has been provided.

We will be unable to provide this information under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This is because compliance will exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours set out in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004

Whether the fine was appealed

We can provide a figure for how many cases were challenged.

The outcome of the appeal

We can provide a figure for cases which were closed due to an exemption being confirmed.

The final status of the case (paid, cancelled, escalated)

We can provide this information.

I want to see a trace of how each case progressed through your system — what was allowed, what was overturned, what went to appeal, what got blocked, and what was escalated. That is the only way for the public to understand the fairness, failure rate, and consistency of your enforcement process.

If you require the journey for each individual case, we will need to manually interrogate each record and will therefore be unable to provide this information under Section 12 of the FOIA as it exceeds the appropriate limit set out above.’

[On 8 August 2025 you clarified your request as follows]

‘I require the following information for the last three (3) calendar years to the present date.

For all NHS Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) issued in England during this period:

1. Case Reference Data

Unique PCN case reference number (anonymised so no personal identifiers remain).

Date the PCN was issued.

Amount charged (broken down to show the prescription charge element and the penalty element separately).

2. Case Outcome Data

Whether the PCN was paid in full, cancelled, reduced, or written off.

If disputed/appealed:

Date of dispute/appeal.

Grounds for dispute (categorised by reason, e.g., “valid exemption held”, “prepayment certificate issue”, “administrative error”).

Outcome of dispute (successful, partially successful, unsuccessful).

Date of outcome.

3. Statistical Summary Data

Total number of PCNs issued per year.

Total number disputed/appealed per year.

Number and percentage of disputes that were successful per year.

Total penalty revenue collected per year.’

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 22 July 2025, with clarification received on 8 August 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.

We stopped issuing PCNs during the Covid-19 pandemic and resumed issuing during 2022, therefore the numbers for this year may be lower.

The data will change as further action on cases takes place. Cases issued in 2025 so far may not have had action taken, so this would not be reflected in these datasets.

Question 1 and 2

A copy of the data is attached. The data is split into four datasets.

FOI-03057 Q1 & 2 (1) - PECS 2022 and 2023

FOI-03057 Q1 & 2 (2) - PECS 2024

FOI-03057 Q1 & 2 (3) - PECS 2025

FOI-03057 Q1 & 2 (4) - DECS 2022 to 2025

Where it shows that zero prescription or dental charge has been received but there is still a Penalty Charge on the case, this is because the patient has gone back and paid the prescription charge or dental treatment charge after the PCN has been issued. However, as the charge was not paid at the time of collection or treatment, the patient is still liable for the penalty charge.

For Question 2, we have provided data for cases paid in full, this does not include cases that are partially paid or have an ongoing Direct Debit Plan.

PCN reference number

Please note, we are unable to provide the PCN reference number to ensure the data remains anonymised.

We can confirm that we do hold the requested information, but this information is exempt under section 40(2) of the FOIA (personal information).

Section 40(2) is an absolute, prejudice-based exemption and therefore is exempt if disclosure would contravene any of the data protection principles. In order for disclosure to comply with the lawfulness, fairness, and transparency principle, we either need the consent of the data subject(s) or there must be a legitimate interest in disclosure. In addition, the disclosure must be necessary to meet the legitimate interest and finally, the disclosure must not cause unwarranted harm.

As we do not have the consent of the data subject(s), the NHSBSA is therefore required to conduct a balancing exercise between legitimate interest of the applicant in disclosure against the rights and freedoms of the data subject(s).

The NHSBSA acknowledges that you have a legitimate interest in disclosure of the information in order to provide the full picture of the requested data held by the NHSBSA; however, we have concluded that disclosure of the requested information would cause unwarranted harm and therefore, section 40(2) is engaged. This is because there is a reasonable expectation that patient data processed by the NHSBSA remains confidential.

Please see the following link to view the section 40 exemption in full - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/40

Successful challenges

For cases which have been challenged (disputed/appealed), we are able to provide data for successful challenges.

Easement Active and Exemption Confirmed Active columns show cases which have been successfully challenged.

Date of challenge, grounds for challenge, unsuccessful challenges, date of outcome

The NHSBSA does hold the requested information; however, we estimate that the cost of compliance with the request would exceed the appropriate limit under section 12 of the FOIA.

We estimate that the cost of complying with your request 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 and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the NHSBSA holds the information, and locating, retrieving, extracting and checking the information.

We do not automatically record data on the date of a challenge, the grounds for a challenge, unsuccessful challenges and date of outcomes. We may hold this data on each individual case if this has been recorded by an agent within the notes. However, we would need to manually interrogate each case to determine whether an unsuccessful challenge has been made. There have been 2,657,190 PCNs issued since 2022, and we estimate it would take 5 minutes to check each case.

Please see the following calculations which sets out the estimated cost for compliance with this request:

2,657,190 x 5 minutes = 13,285,950 minutes (221,432.5 hours)

Please be advised that due to the way that the information is held by the NHSBSA, it is not possible to submit a refined request under the appropriate limit.

Please see the following link to view the section 12 in full - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/12

Question 3

A copy of the data is attached.

As per question 2, we can provide the number of successful challenges, but we are unable to provide the total number and percentage of challenges without manual interrogation. This information is therefore exempt under section 12 of the FOIA as detailed above.

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.