Sexual and Reproductive Health Services, England (Contraception) 2021/22

Data for items dispensed in the community are sourced from the prescribing team at NHS Digital. The system used is the Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA) system, supplied by the Prescription Services Division of the NHS Business Services Authority (NHS BSA) and is based on the full analysis of all prescriptions dispensed in the community.

Prescriptions written by GPs and non-medical prescribers (nurses, pharmacists etc.) in England represent the vast majority of prescriptions included. Prescriptions written by dentists and hospital doctors are also included provided they were dispensed in the community. Also included are prescriptions written in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man but dispensed in England. The data do not cover items dispensed in hospital or on private prescriptions.

The majority of items provided by SRH services would not be captured in this prescribing data, though there is likely to be a small amount of overlap where the prescription item is unavailable directly from the service.

Prescribing data is collected on a different basis to SRHAD and so the datasets cannot generally be combined.  It represents a count of items prescribed, unlike the activity based nature of SRHAD.

Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives (LARCs) by year

In 2021, there were 1.10 million LARC prescriptions dispensed in the community, which is 7% higher than in 2020 (1.03 million), but 12% below the pre-Covid pandemic level of 2019 (1.24 million).

User-dependant contraceptives by year

In 2021, there were 6.47 million prescriptions for user-dependant contraceptives dispensed in the community, a fall of 4% on 2020 (6.73 million). This continues a gradual long-term decline; there has been a fall of 12% since 2011, when 7.36 million prescriptions were dispensed.

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For more information: Data table 13