Data LibraryOfficial statistics
Dispensing Practices — items dispensed
Geography: England EnglandApr 2026 · ~3-month lag
Dispensing practices only — a subset of GP practices. This counts prescription items dispensed in English community pharmacies, attributed back to the originating GP practice, so a practice only appears when its prescriptions were dispensed in England. 9,536 dispensing practice(s) match this scope. Items are a SUBSET of all prescribing; for total prescribing volume see the Prescribing (NHSBSA EPD) explorer.
Items / 1,000 / mthEngland
1,687dispensed in communityEPS % of items
92.4%electronic routingItems dispensed
106,686,403▼ 2.1% vs prior monthDispensing practices
9,536subset of all practicesEPS adoption (% of dispensed items)
Σ EPS items ÷ Σ items dispensed · last 3 month(s) · England
Top geographies — ICBs across England
Ranked by items dispensed per 1,000 registered patients · Apr 2026
England average: 1,687
Where this geography sits
This geography is at the 42nd percentile of 36 peers on items / 1,000.
Tip: click a bar to drill into it.
All icbs — ICBs across England
Latest-month metrics · Apr 2026 · sortable · dispensing practices only
| NHS LINCOLNSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 2,589 | 73% | 2,126,355 | 122 |
| NHS NORTH EAST AND NORTH CUMBRIA INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 2,389 | 95.5% | 8,047,516 | 521 |
| NHS SOUTH YORKSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 2,179 | 97.2% | 3,303,463 | 260 |
| NHS HUMBER AND NORTH YORKSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 2,122 | 84.7% | 3,829,316 | 260 |
| NHS NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 2,103 | 77.3% | 3,766,476 | 203 |
| NHS CORNWALL AND THE ISLES OF SCILLY INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 2,101 | 72.8% | 1,269,125 | 122 |
| NHS CHESHIRE AND MERSEYSIDE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,985 | 96.9% | 5,548,409 | 538 |
| NHS LANCASHIRE AND SOUTH CUMBRIA INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,958 | 94.7% | 3,355,416 | 259 |
| NHS STAFFORDSHIRE AND STOKE-ON-TRENT INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,919 | 92.9% | 2,308,149 | 206 |
| NHS WEST YORKSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,839 | 97.4% | 4,916,845 | 394 |
| NHS DEVON INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,838 | 86.9% | 2,371,640 | 175 |
| NHS NORTHAMPTONSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,812 | 93.1% | 1,515,877 | 85 |
| NHS NOTTINGHAM AND NOTTINGHAMSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,792 | 94.1% | 2,266,727 | 173 |
| NHS GREATER MANCHESTER INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,776 | 97.4% | 5,892,957 | 599 |
| NHS GLOUCESTERSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,766 | 88% | 1,232,413 | 120 |
| NHS DORSET INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,752 | 91% | 1,443,036 | 75 |
| NHS LEICESTER, LEICESTERSHIRE AND RUTLAND INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,740 | 92.1% | 2,128,986 | 198 |
| NHS HEREFORDSHIRE AND WORCESTERSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,722 | 80.2% | 1,431,736 | 145 |
| NHS ESSEX INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,708 | 91.5% | 3,433,305 | 324 |
| NHS BATH AND NORTH EAST SOMERSET, SWINDON AND WILTSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,702 | 88.1% | 1,716,059 | 127 |
| NHS BLACK COUNTRY INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,701 | 97.2% | 2,479,364 | 259 |
| NHS DERBY AND DERBYSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,687 | 92.8% | 1,868,527 | 142 |
| NHS SHROPSHIRE, TELFORD AND WREKIN INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,673 | 81.1% | 895,745 | 70 |
| NHS COVENTRY AND WARWICKSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,672 | 89.1% | 1,853,876 | 190 |
| NHS SOMERSET INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,635 | 84.9% | 987,420 | 67 |
| NHS KENT AND MEDWAY INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,564 | 89.7% | 3,184,807 | 281 |
| NHS HAMPSHIRE AND ISLE OF WIGHT INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,506 | 94.3% | 3,709,835 | 243 |
| NHS SURREY AND SUSSEX INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,491 | 94.4% | 4,465,441 | 402 |
| NHS CENTRAL EAST INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,483 | 91.6% | 5,222,778 | 387 |
| NHS BIRMINGHAM AND SOLIHULL INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,453 | 97% | 2,175,300 | 233 |
| NHS NORTH EAST LONDON INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,364 | 98% | 3,324,128 | 342 |
| NHS THAMES VALLEY INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,308 | 88.6% | 3,014,049 | 237 |
| NHS SOUTH WEST LONDON INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,282 | 98.4% | 2,234,831 | 232 |
| NHS BRISTOL, NORTH SOMERSET AND SOUTH GLOUCESTERSHIRE INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,248 | 96.4% | 1,356,102 | 113 |
| NHS WEST AND NORTH LONDON INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,194 | 98.6% | 5,566,918 | 650 |
| NHS SOUTH EAST LONDON INTEGRATED CARE BOARD | 1,135 | 98.2% | 2,364,596 | 270 |
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About this data
Provenance & method
- Status
- Official statistics
- Latest period
- Apr 2026
- History depth
- Feb 2026 → Apr 2026
- Scale
- 28,684 rows
- Licence
- Open Government Licence v3.0
- How this is produced
- Discovered + downloaded from the NHSBSA Open Data Portal (CKAN) package "Dispensing Practices dispensing data". The portal's datastore query layer is unavailable for this package, so the gated loader STREAMS the ~140 MB month CSV (served from Cloudflare R2) and folds it to one practice-grain row. The source rows are at (month × originating practice × dispensing contractor) grain; items + EPS items are SUMMED over contractors to one row per originating practice, then rolled up the ODS tree (practice → PCN → ICB → region → national) by summation. The items-per-1,000 figure is Σ items ÷ Σ registered patients. The dataset tracks dispensing within community contractors IN ENGLAND attributed to the originating practice, so coverage is a SUBSET of GP practices — those whose prescriptions were dispensed in England; cross-border / placeholder source practices that do not join the English GP ODS spine are dropped. Published monthly, ~3 months in arrears.