Thank you for your request for information about the following:

Request

‘Please provide details as follows:

1. The number of private prescriptions for controlled drugs submitted to the NHSBSA by pharmacy contractors in England where the prescriber's address was not in England or where the form submitted was the equivalent of the FP10(PCD) form used in England (i.e. PPCD(1) forms in Scotland, WP10(PCD) forms in Wales and PCD1 form in Northern Ireland). Please provide these data by month split between form types and indicating the ICB area in which the dispensing pharmacy was located.

2. Please provide the number of prescriptions dispensed by month split between form types as in 1, and the nature of the medicine supplied by preparation, please include details of any products which may not have a BNF category such as cannabis based medicinal products.’

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 3 September 2025.

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

Our response

Our data source captures private prescribing originating from England on private controlled drug forms(FP10PCD), so does not hold data with regards to where the prescriber's address was not in England or where the form submitted was the equivalent of the FP10(PCD) form used in England (i.e. PPCD(1) forms in Scotland, WP10(PCD) forms in Wales and PCD1 form in Northern Ireland).

As instructed in the Drug Tariff, all private prescriptions issued for controlled drugs in Schedule 2 or 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 must be ordered using the prescription form designed specifically for this purpose (FP10PCD).

Following dispensing, the original FP10PCD prescription forms must be submitted to the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) for audit purposes.

If pharmacies did submit a non-English private prescription to NHSBSA, we would not process it.

It may be possible that we hold some non-English private prescriptions within the batches of prescription forms. However, if the NHSBSA does hold the requested information; 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 hold copies of prescription forms for 18 months. An estimated 2,000,000 Private Controlled Drug Items have been prescribed in the past 18 months. We estimate that it would take 1 minute to check 120 forms.

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

2,000,000 forms checking 2 per second = 1,000,000 seconds or 16,666 minutes or 277.77 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

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.