FOI-03587

Thank you for your request for information about the following: 

##Request 

<p><i>‘I seek the following information for the period from January 1, 2019, to December 31, 2025:</i></p>

<p><i>Counts of Schedule 2 and Schedule 3 CBPM prescription items dispensed privately in England, broken down by:</i></p>

<p><i>1, Prescriber Identification Number (PIN)</i></p>

<p><i>2, Month and year of dispensing</i></p>

<p><i>Aggregate totals for each prescriber over the entire period, indicating the total number of CBPM items prescribed.</i></p>

<p><i>Anonymisation</i></p>

<p><i>I am requesting fully anonymised data only. Prescriber names, addresses, or other direct identifiers are not required. If necessary, PINs may be pseudonymised or replaced with unique anonymous identifiers, provided this still allows prescriptions from the same prescriber to be linked across the dataset.</i></p>

<p><i>Please include prescribers with low item counts and avoid suppression or banding unless legally required.</i></p>

<p><i>Format</i></p>

<p><i>I would prefer the data in a machine-readable format such as CSV or Excel.</i></p>

<p><i>Scope and refinement</i></p>

<p><i>If this request exceeds the cost limit under Section 12, I would be happy to discuss refining so that the request can be fulfilled.</i></p>

<p><i>Context and precedent:</i></p>

<p><i>This request aligns with the data provided in response to previous FOI requests, notably the study titled "Private prescribing of controlled opioids in England, 2014–2021: a retrospective observational study" published in the British Journal of General Practice in 2023 . In that instance, the NHSBSA supplied anonymised prescriber-level data, including the distribution of items per PIN.’</i></p>

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 5 February 2026.  

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). 

##Our response 

I can confirm that we hold the information you have requested and a copy of the information is attached. 

Please read the notes to ensure your correct understanding of the data. 

##Controlled drugs 

Private prescribing data held by the NHSBSA is only captured for monitoring purposes and is limited to controlled drugs within Schedule 2 and 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act. 

We do not capture the medical reason why a drug has been prescribed. 

##Data capture 

When we process prescriptions using our data capture, prescriptions sometimes contain prescribing of medicines that were not populated on our drug database at the time. Any prescribing that falls into this category is captured as an ‘unspecified drug’.   

Unlicensed cannabis-based medicines that fall into this ‘unspecified’ category are identified by an additional review process. The items identified by this review are reported against the date that the prescription was written and not necessarily when they were submitted to us. Therefore, these figures within the data may be subject to change if more prescriptions are submitted to us in a later month. 

The latest prescribed dates identified in the processed data at the time of preparing this response is June 2025, but this is likely to be subject to change. 

Please note that the extracted data is only recorded and stored for monitoring purposes rather than being validated. The data provided in this request is given as recorded. End users may perform further validation when using the data for controlled drug monitoring.  

##Items 

The term ‘items’ refers to the number of times a product appears on a prescription form, and not the quantity prescribed. 

##Prescriber Identifier (PIN) 

Prescriber Identifier (PIN) has been extracted where possible as part of the manual process and has been pseudonymised for the purposes of this request. 

The PID has not been validated against any official lists and may include misidentified or mistyped codes and in some cases, it is not recorded. See the data dictionary for the dummy codes presented in these cases. 

##Data source 

Data source for identification of unlicensed cannabis medicines is a manual prescription search of private prescriptions that has been taken from data captured as unspecified prescribing and reported as ‘Unspecified Drugs’ within our ePACT2 system. Prescribing information reported as ‘Unspecified Drugs’ within ePACT2 includes any prescribing where the product has been captured as unspecified. 

##Data Queries 

Please contact <a href=mailto:foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk>foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk</a> 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 <a href=mailto:communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk>communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk</a>. 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 2026”. 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.

Tags: CBPM prescription, NHS Prescriptions, Schedule 2, Schedule 3
Organization: Freedom of Information Disclosure Log