Published 16 October 2025.
Publication
General Pharmaceutical Services - England 2015/16 to 2024/25 statistical summary narrative (HTML)
Summary
Community pharmacies and appliance contractors are responsible for dispensing medications, appliances, and medical devices to NHS patients. They are not a direct part of the NHS but provide essential services on behalf of the NHS to the general public.
This publication aims to describe the essential and advanced services that community pharmacies and appliance contractors provide, along with some of their associated costs.
The General Pharmaceutical Services (GPhS) publication is an accredited official statistic release. Accredited official statistics status means that GPhS meets the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality, public value, and complies with all aspects of the Code of Practice for Statistics.
The designation of this publication as an accredited official statistic was confirmed in December 2021 following an independent review by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).
You can read more about this confirmation and the independent review of these statistics on the OSR website.
Key findings
In England in 2024/25:
- there were 11,098 community pharmacies that submitted prescriptions for processing. For important information about interpreting this figure see section 3 of the statistical summary narrative. At 31 March 2025, there were 10,407 community pharmacies open in England
- there were 111 appliance contractors that submitted prescriptions for processing
- 1.16 billion prescription items were dispensed by community pharmacies - this was a 4% increase from 2023/24
- an additional 1.9 million items were issued following Pharmacy First clinical pathways consultations
- 13 million prescription items were dispensed by appliance contractors - this was a 7% increase from 2023/24
- 1.13 billion prescription items were dispensed via the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) - this was 97% of all items dispensed, and a less than 1% percent increase from 2023/24
- the cost of drugs and appliances reimbursed totalled £10.4 billion - this was a 2% increase from 2023/24
Resource list
Supporting summary tables (Excel: 115KB)Background information and methodology document (HTML)
Pre-release access list (HTML)
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Contact list
If you have any questions, comments, or would like more information you can email statistics@nhsbsa.nhs.uk.
Responsible statistician: Kirsty Gray