FOI release

FOI2026/00593 - Written Prescriptions

Published 10 June 2026

1. Your request

Please find below information requests in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000:

1) The total number of veterinary written prescriptions that were issued in 2025.

2) The total number of veterinary written prescriptions that were filled by pharmacies of any type (internet pharmacies/human pharmacies/veterinary practices etc.) in 2025.

3) Full details of any mechanism currently in place that would allow identification of a single veterinary written prescription for a medication other than that classified as a Controlled Drug being submitted to and filled by multiple pharmacies.

4) The proportion of veterinary written prescriptions for medications other than those classified as Controlled Drugs for which a physical copy of the original prescription was obtained by the fulfilling pharmacy out of the total number received in 2025.

5) The number of reports of suspected offences relating to veterinary written prescriptions that were received by the VMD in 2025.

6) A breakdown of the actions taken by the VMD in relation to those reports of suspected offences relating to veterinary written prescriptions received by the VMD in 2025.

7) The VMD’s estimate of the number of offences pertaining to veterinary written prescriptions that occurred in 2025 and therefore the estimated rate of reporting of such offences to the VMD and the associated conviction rate. If data for this is not yet available, please provide the same data for the most recent year for which data is held (if any).

8) The number of instances of offences pertaining to veterinary written prescriptions that were pro-actively identified by the VMD in 2025 (without them being reported by a third party) via methods such as pursuing offences admitted to on social media or any other methodology.

For any of the above requests, where data for 2025 is not yet available, please supply the relevant data for the most recent year for which data is available (if any).

This information is requested subsequent to my prior communications with your organisation in which I have expressed my concerns that your organisation has failed to fulfil its obligations relating to safeguarding the supply of veterinary medications (especially those supplied via the online route) and as a result is potentially endangering animal and human health and welfare.

This information gathering is a precursor to the intended submission of a formal complaint of dereliction of duty by your organisation. It is my suspicion that you will not have much of the information that has been requested which will prove beyond any reasonable doubt that your organisation has failed to implement and sustain any appropriate system to monitor, identify or act upon offences that take place. You have also refused any method of stress testing the current system to identify the level of risk.

If you require any clarification on the above requests, please let me know via reply to this e-mail and I will provide this.

If this request is too broad, please advise how I might narrow it to keep it under the cost limit.

I believe the information requested is of significant public interest due to the impact on human and animal health and welfare and falls within the scope of the Act.

2. Our reply

2.1 Questions relating to the VMD’s records on prescription use

We do not collect or hold information on the issuing or use of prescriptions.

The VMD is responsible for regulating the safe, effective and responsible use of veterinary medicines in the UK. As part of this role, the VMD inspects veterinary practice premises (VPPs) to ensure that veterinary medicines are stored, supplied, and managed in compliance with the Veterinary Medicines Regulations (VMR).

The full VMD Inspection Criteria for VPPs are published on GOV.UK and set out both legal requirements and good practice expectations: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/inspection-criteria-for-veterinary-practice-premises.

While they do not hold a central database of every prescription, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) manage the Practice Standards Scheme (PSS), which ensures practices maintain proper records, and they regulate the professional conduct of vets.

2.2 Questions relating to the VMD’s enforcement activities

There were 755 reports of suspected offences  relating to veterinary written prescriptions received by the VMD in 2025.

We sent a written notification to all the offenders of prescription fraud informing them of the breach to the VMR that they had committed, in line with our published enforcement policy which can be found of the gov.uk website https://www.gov.uk/guidance/enforcement-policy-for-animal-medicines   

We do not collect or hold information on the estimated reporting rate of these offences.

Our enforcement approach is to take proportionate, risk-based action to deal with breaches to the VMR. To do so, we receive information (raw, unverified and unevaluated data) and intelligence (processed, evaluated and perspective data) from a range of sources such as the pharmaceutical industry, veterinarians, general public and other stakeholders. All offences related to written prescriptions were therefore received in this capacity.