Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Request

You asked us:

RE FOI-02715 https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-02715. Can this previous request be updated with:

Thanks, and happy to elaborate.

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 28 August 2025.

We requested clarification on 19 September:

In the data set for FOI-02715 the category for ‘No Exemption category Items & NIC GBP’ is found in column X and Y in the spreadsheet.

Would you just like a rerun of the data set for FOI-02715 for Q4 of 2024 and Q1 of 2025?

You responded on 19 September 2025:

You commented “In the data set for FOI-02715 the category for ‘No Exemption category Items & NIC GBP’ is found in column X and Y in the spreadsheet.”. This may be my not understanding fully, but below are the column headings I have and columns X and Y are not labelled well enough for me to comprehend. I took the labels for columns X and Y to be an uncategorized type of exemption. If you are now telling me that these are the items dispensed, and the cost of those, for Non-exempt prescriptions then that’s of use to me. For example I do not qualify for any exemptions in regards to prescriptions so my activity would be recorded in columns X and Y I assume. Also if we sum across all the categories we should get an understanding of the entire NHS prescribing volume (items and costs) for the pharmacy, i.e. we are not missing any NHS prescribing activity.

And also an explanation for the difference between columns H & I and AJ & AK.

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

Our response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information and notes explaining it 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: ePACT2
Data in ePACT2 is sourced from the NHSBSA 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.

Time Period
Financial quarters:
July-September 2024
October-December 2024
January-March 2025
April-June 2025

Data
Includes all items and Net Ingredient Cost (£) split by exemption category.

Please note - in instances where no dispensing is recorded for a pharmacy contractor for the respective quarter, they are not included within the data for that quarter.

The unassigned category holds chargeable prescriptions – all other categories are exempt from a prescription charge.

Organisation Data
The data is for prescriptions dispensed in England by English Pharmacy and English Appliance Contractor account types. LPS dispensers are indicated (Y/N). A date with the letter 'C' in brackets - example (C 01-Apr-25) against Dispenser name indicates that this organisation is closed as of the date stated.

Items
Items show the number of times a product appears on a prescription form, not the quantity prescribed.

Net Ingredient Cost (£)
Net Ingredient cost (NIC) is 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.

Prescription Charge Exemption Category

The overall high level exemption rate is as robust as it can be in terms of the data we hold.

Note that the term "exemption" for the purposes of NHSBSA processing means that no 'per item charge' was collected from the patient at the time of dispensing - and therefore "exemption from the per item charge" includes cases where a patient held a valid pre-payment certificate (PPC).

However, the quality of the data in relation to the specific exemption categories being used does have significant limitations that have changed over time depending on the submission and processing systems in place at the time.

From July 2024 onwards most prescriptions submitted using the Electronic Prescribing System (EPS) that were determined to be exempt from the per item charge - using the Real Time Exemption Checking service (RTEC) can be reported with a specific reason that the single per item charge was not paid. Although some issues do remain for prescriptions that are scanned from paper, manually entered EPS exemptions, or from a fraction of EPS RTEC messages that are not able to be linked to an exemption category.

Prior to July 2024 the data in relation to the specific exemption categories has significant data quality limitations.

This is due to how information has been captured during our scanning process and even for prescriptions received via the Electronic Prescribing System, there was considerable uncertainty due to the use of the (RTEC) service. Exemptions determined using RTEC used to be classified as “No Declaration/Declaration Not Specific” as no specific code was available - this is likely to be represented as a large but unknown number of prescriptions for those standalone exemption categories. And significant under-estimates of the true number of times that those specific exemptions were used.

The processing of paper prescriptions may also have resulted in inaccuracies of exemption categories. In many cases, the mark(s) on the rear of the form intended to indicate one, or more, exemption reason(s) is not clear and can be misinterpreted by the NHSBSA scanners. NHSBSA do not perform validation or verification of which exemption category has been marked or recorded during scanning.

The exemption (Category C) 'Aged 60 Or Over’, was merged in January 2020 with the Under 16 category (Category A) and the new category became ‘Under 16 / Aged 60 or over’ (Category A) on prescription forms.

The NHSBSA categorises patients who are age exempt in the categories A (under 16) and C (60 and over). Where the patient age is captured, it is used to identify patients who are age exempt (category A or C). The exemption category on the prescription is only used if the patient age does not already identify the prescription as exempt.

In practice this will mean that ‘Under 16 / Aged 60 Or Over’ can be considered to be patients ‘under 16 years’, and ‘Aged 60 Or Over’ can be considered to be patients 60 years or over.

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: “ePACT2, 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.