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National trends, pharmacy rankings and insights into NHS services.
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- Pharmacy FirstExplore national service activity and trends.
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- Hypertension case-findingExplore blood pressure service activity.
EPS & dispensing
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England
Scotland
Wales
Northern Ireland
National trends, pharmacy rankings and insights into NHS services.
Browse all reports →National leaderboards
NHS service reports
- Pharmacy FirstExplore national service activity and trends.
- Flu vaccinationsExplore vaccination activity and trends.
- Hypertension case-findingExplore blood pressure service activity.
EPS & dispensing
- EPS nominationsNational trends, rankings and ICB comparisons.
- Distance selling pharmaciesExplore activity across distance selling pharmacies.
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Distance Selling Pharmacies in England
Explore the changing landscape of distance selling pharmacies in England. Analyse their growth, geographic distribution, dispensing activity, EPS nominations and how the sector compares with traditional community pharmacies.
How big is the DSP sector today?
Key figures as of the latest available reporting period for each dataset.
+46 vs 12 months ago
of every active England pharmacy contract type
trending_up+15.4%
+0.4 pts vs 12 months ago
trending_up+3.5%
Share of EPS nominations: 4.4% (-0.1 pts vs 12 months ago) of all DSP + traditional pharmacy nominations.
The Growth of Distance Selling Pharmacies
Number of pharmacies reporting dispensing activity each month, among pharmacies classified as a DSP (or traditional community pharmacy) today. info
Number of pharmacies, by type
DSPs vs traditional community pharmacies, last 36 months.
+46 pharmacies
DSP Dispensing Activity
NHS prescription items dispensed by DSPs, and how that compares with traditional community pharmacy.
Total DSP items dispensed
Monthly total across every reporting DSP in England.
DSP vs traditional — indexed growth
Both series rebased to 100 at the start of the window, so growth rates can be compared directly.
DSP share of national dispensing
DSP items as a percentage of DSP + traditional community pharmacy items each month.
The median is well below the average — a small number of very large DSPs pull the average up.
What Does a Typical DSP Look Like?
Leaderboards show the extremes; this shows what’s happening across the whole sector, June 2026.
DSPs by monthly dispensing volume
Number of DSPs within each dispensing volume range.
EPS Nominations and Patient Reach
How many patients have nominated a DSP to receive their electronic prescriptions, and how that share has changed over time. info
DSP EPS nominations over time
Latest available week in each calendar month, last 36 months.
DSP share of EPS nominations
DSP nominations as a percentage of DSP + traditional pharmacy nominations.
DSP nomination leaderboard
| # | Pharmacy | ICB | EPS nominations | Monthly items |
|---|
DSP Performance Rankings
The largest and fastest-growing distance selling pharmacies in England.
Only includes DSPs that dispensed at least items 12 months earlier, so a very small pharmacy moving from a handful of items to a few hundred can’t dominate the table with a huge but meaningless percentage swing.
How Concentrated Is the DSP Market?
Market concentration measures how much of the sector’s activity sits with its largest operators. A highly concentrated market can behave very differently from one with many similarly-sized competitors — for example, it may be more sensitive to a single large operator’s decisions.
The 20 largest DSPs, and their cumulative share
Bars show each branch’s own monthly items; the line shows the running share of all DSP items as you add each one, largest first.
Largest DSP-operating companies
Grouped by ultimate owning company where PharmData has one recorded. Of the 409 companies identified behind England’s DSPs, only 9 operate more than one DSP branch — the sector is overwhelmingly made up of single-branch companies, so group-level and branch-level concentration are usually close but not identical.
| # | Company | DSP branches | Monthly items |
|---|
NHS Service Provision
Trailing 12-month activity (12 months to June 2026), to smooth out seasonal services like flu vaccination. DSPs operate under different service-delivery constraints from traditional pharmacies, so lower DSP participation does not necessarily mean a service is unavailable there — and Pharmacy First activity isn’t shown here because PharmData does not yet have reliable consultation-level data for it. info
Activity per pharmacy, DSP vs traditional
Trailing 12-month total divided by the number of pharmacies in each group, so the very different group sizes don’t distort the comparison.
Participation rate
Share of pharmacies in each group recording at least one instance of activity over the last 12 months.
| Service | DSP | Traditional |
|---|
Where Are England’s DSPs Located?
Registered premises locations for 455 active DSPs. info
DSPs by ICB
Only ICBs with at least one DSP are shown. Share is of that ICB’s active pharmacies of any contract type.
| ICB unfold_more | DSPs unfold_more | All pharmacies unfold_more | DSP share unfold_more | DSP items unfold_more | DSP nominations unfold_more |
|---|
How Do DSPs Compare?
DSPs and traditional community pharmacies operate different models, so this is a snapshot of scale and activity, not a claim that the two are directly equivalent.
| Metric | DSPs | Traditional pharmacies |
|---|---|---|
| Number of pharmacies | 456 | 10,010 |
| Total monthly items (June 2026) | 7,733,932 | 93,757,768 |
| Median items per pharmacy | 6,326 | 8,590 |
| YoY dispensing growth | trending_up+15.4% | trending_up+9.6% |
| EPS nominations (2 November 2026) | 2,323,491 | 50,681,315 |
| Median EPS nominations per pharmacy | 778 | 4,690 |
| Share of total community dispensing | 7.6% | 92.4% |
| NMS activity per pharmacy (trailing 12 months) | 838.1 | 1,194.7 |
Pharmacy First activity is not shown - see the methodology section below for why.
DSPs to Watch
Factual patterns in the data — sustained growth, rapid recent growth, nomination growth, and pharmacies recently appearing in PharmData’s dispensing records. These are descriptions of the data, not judgements about the quality or sustainability of a pharmacy’s business.
Sustained growth
DSPs whose dispensing volume rose in every one of the last 6 consecutive months (9 qualify).
| Pharmacy | ICB | Total change |
|---|
Rapid recent growth
Largest percentage increase in items over the last 6 months (minimum 1,000 items 6 months ago).
| Pharmacy | ICB | Change |
|---|
Nomination growth leaders
Largest increase in EPS nominations over the last 12 months.
| Pharmacy | ICB | Change |
|---|
Recently appearing, with early growth
First appeared in PharmData’s dispensing records within the last 12 months, with higher volume now than when first seen. Not necessarily newly opened — see the methodology note.
| Pharmacy | First seen | Current |
|---|
What does the data show?
DSPs accounted for 7.6% of England community pharmacy dispensing items in June 2026, up from 7.3% twelve months earlier.
DSP dispensing volume grew by 15.4% over the twelve months to June 2026, while traditional community pharmacy dispensing grew by 9.6% over the same period.
The median DSP dispensed 6,326 items in June 2026, notably below the average of 17,903 - a sign that a relatively small number of very large operators dominate total DSP volume.
The number of pharmacies reporting as a DSP rose from 386 to 432 over the twelve months to June 2026 (+11.9%).
DSPs held 4.4% of all EPS nominations as of 2 November 2026, having grown their total nominations by 3.5% over the preceding twelve months.
The 5 largest DSPs accounted for 50.8% of all DSP dispensing items in June 2026.
The top 10 DSP branches accounted for 54.7% of all DSP dispensing items, and the top 10 by EPS nominations held 79.0% of all DSP nominations - most of this concentration sits at branch level, since 9 of the 409 companies identified behind England's DSPs operate more than one branch.
Half of all DSPs dispensed fewer than 6,319 items in June 2026, and only 12 DSPs dispensed more than 50,000 - the sector is dominated by a small number of very large operators rather than being uniformly large.
9 DSPs increased their dispensing volume in every one of the last 6 months.
About this data & methodology
- DSP classification
- A pharmacy is classified as a distance selling pharmacy (DSP) where PharmData records
contract_type = 'internet'for its current contract — the only DSP indicator available in the underlying data. - No historical classification record
- PharmData only stores each pharmacy's current contract type, not a history of changes. Every historical DSP trend on this page therefore applies today's classification back across past months of dispensing/nomination data, rather than reflecting what each pharmacy was actually classified as at the time. A pharmacy that changed contract type during the window shown would appear as a DSP (or not) for its entire history here.
- “Traditional community pharmacy”
- Used as the comparison group for dispensing and EPS nomination market share. Excludes DSPs and Dispensing Appliance Contractors (DACs), which dispense appliances rather than the full range of medicines and would distort a like-for-like dispensing comparison if included on either side.
- DSP share of all pharmacies
- Unlike the dispensing/nomination market-share figures, this headcount measure counts every active England contract type (including DACs) as the denominator — it is a simple share of pharmacies, not of dispensing volume.
- Newly appearing / no longer reporting
- A DSP only counts as “newly appearing” if it has a dispensing record in the latest month but not in the comparison month, and vice versa for “no longer reporting”. This reflects when a pharmacy started or stopped reporting dispensing data under today's classification — it is not a confirmed contract opening or closure.
- Different reporting schedules
- NHS dispensing data (
figures) and EPS nomination data (eps_noms) are published on different schedules and are shown using each dataset's own latest available period, which can differ by several months. - EPS nominations
- A nomination is a patient's chosen pharmacy for electronic prescriptions, not a measure of active or unique customers. A DSP may dispense items for patients nominated to it in a previous period, or for patients nominated elsewhere.
- Geography
- Map and ICB figures use each DSP's registered premises location. DSPs can dispense to patients anywhere in England, so this should not be read as showing where a DSP's patients are located.
- Market concentration
- Measures how much of DSP dispensing/nominations is held by the largest operators - a useful signal for understanding how reliant the sector is on a small number of large players, not a judgement on whether that concentration is good or bad. Group-level figures use PharmData's recorded ultimate owning company; a DSP without one recorded is shown as “Unidentified / independent” rather than omitted.
- NHS services shown
- Limited to services with reliable recorded activity in the underlying data at the time of writing: New Medicine Service, Hypertension Case-Finding, Pharmacy Contraception Service, Flu Vaccination and Smoking Cessation (shown as a trailing 12-month total to smooth seasonal services like flu vaccination). Pharmacy First, Medicines Use Reviews and some other services are not shown because PharmData does not yet have populated consultation-level data for them - this is a data-availability gap, not evidence those services recorded zero activity.
- “Recently appearing” DSPs
- A DSP is treated as recently appearing only if its earliest dispensing record within the fetched history window falls in the last 12 months, and only PharmData's data window is checked - there is no reliable contract start date to verify this against, so it should not be read as confirmation of a new contract or branch opening.
- Leaderboard thresholds
- The “fastest growing” leaderboard only includes DSPs that dispensed at least 1,000 items 12 months earlier, so a very small pharmacy cannot dominate the ranking with a large but statistically meaningless percentage change.