Request

Under the Freedom of Information Act, please can you provide the Pharmacy Level MIS information as provided in FOI-02691 (that request provided information up to January 2025 dispensing month, please provide the months now available since then).

I understand that you are unable to include the Controlled Drug information as part of the MIS data release, so please exclude data on ‘Methadone Payment Fee’ and ‘Controlled Drugs Fee Value’ as you have done with previous releases. Please provide the data in the same Excel format as per FOI-02691.

Response

August 2025

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

Source System – Insight Data Warehouse.

Time period

August 2025 - Pharmacy data

This dataset

This report consists of a management information file detailing monthly community pharmacy payment by type of payment and contractor account. Payments include all drug costs, fees, patient charges, locally authorised payments, etc. Other details such as the numbers of items dispensed and patient charges collected are also included.

The management information file reflects the contractor's payment and prescription data associated with the Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) structure at the relevant payment date.

Disclosure Control

The data in columns ‘METHADONE PAYMENT FEE’ and ‘CONTROLLED DRUGS FEE VALUE’ within the Pharmacy dataset have been removed following Information Governance policy.

Note- for further information relating to the payments included within this Data Dictionary, please consult the NHS Business Services Authority's Electronic Drug Tariff and NHS Prescription Services payment information (Local Authorised Payments National Menu) :

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/pharmacies-gp-practices-and-appliance-contractors/drug-tariff

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/pharmacies-gp-practices-and-appliance-contractors/dispensing-contractors-information/payment-information

Remaining Data

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.

The information you requested is available from the following weblinks, you can find the data at the bottom of each page under “Data and Resources”

• February 2025, March 2025 : https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-02908

• April 2025, May 2025, June 2025 and July 2025: https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-03295

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

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: “Insight 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.