Private Prescribing: Private Scripts, FP10 and the Number You Need First

If you intend to prescribe Schedule 2 or 3 controlled drugs privately in England, you need form FP10PCD and a six-digit private prescriber identification number issued by the NHS. Without that identifier, community pharmacies should not dispense your prescription.

This is an operational blocker rather than a compliance nicety. It arrives on the day a patient takes your prescription to a pharmacy and is turned away, and obtaining the number is not instant.

Almost everything published about this is written from the dispensing side, for pharmacists deciding whether a prescription is valid. Very little is written for the prescriber who has to get set up in the first place.

What is the difference between an FP10 and a private prescription?

FP10 is the NHS prescription form. It is for NHS patients, funded through NHS arrangements.

A private prescription is issued outside the NHS, and the patient pays the pharmacy the cost of the medicine plus a dispensing fee rather than the NHS prescription charge.

The first rule is simple and absolute: an FP10 must never be used for a private patient. Using NHS stationery for private work is a misuse of NHS resources, not an administrative shortcut.

For most private prescriptions there is no prescribed form at all. You can write on your own headed paper, provided the prescription contains the legally required particulars.

Controlled drugs are the exception, and this is where the forms matter.

What is FP10PCD?

The prescription form for Schedule 2 and Schedule 3 controlled drugs prescribed privately in England.

The equivalents elsewhere are WP10PCD in Wales and PPCD(1) in Scotland.

The form is not the whole requirement. It must carry a six-digit private prescriber identification number, issued to you by the NHS. Guidance to community pharmacies is that private prescriptions for Schedule 2 or 3 controlled drugs should not be dispensed if they do not contain this identifier.

So a private prescription for a Schedule 2 or 3 drug without the number is one a pharmacist is being told not to fill.

Pharmacies then submit these prescriptions monthly to NHS Prescription Services on form FP34PCD, which is how private controlled drug prescribing is monitored nationally.

How do you get the number?

Through the relevant NHS body, as an application rather than something that arrives with your registration. Build the lead time into your launch plan.

The practical failure mode is a clinic that opens, sees a patient who needs a Schedule 3 medicine, writes a perfectly valid-looking private prescription, and discovers the gap at the pharmacy counter with the patient standing there.

What about non-controlled drugs?

Considerably simpler. A private prescription for an ordinary prescription-only medicine can be written on your own stationery, provided it contains the required particulars: the patient's name and address, the medicine, form, strength, dose and quantity, the date, and your name, address, qualification and signature.

Legibility and indelibility matter. So does keeping a record in the clinical notes, which is a professional obligation independently of the prescription itself.

Can an NHS GP charge their own patients for a private prescription?

Generally no, and this catches GPs doing a mix of NHS and private work.

An NHS GP may not charge a patient on their own list for a private prescription for treatment that falls within NHS general medical services. The patient is entitled to an NHS prescription, and offering a chargeable private one instead is not permitted.

There are narrow exceptions, including drugs supplied solely for the onset of an illness while abroad, and malaria prophylaxis. These are specific and limited rather than a general workaround.

The distinction to hold onto is between your NHS patients and genuinely private patients who are not on your list.

What else sits alongside this?

Three things worth having in place before you prescribe controlled drugs privately.

Storage. Covered in our guide to controlled drug storage in a private clinic, where the specification usually quoted at clinics turns out not to be the rule that binds them.

A controlled drugs register. Required of anyone authorised to supply Schedule 1 or 2 controlled drugs, with entries made on the day of the transaction or the following day, and corrections by dated marginal note rather than by alteration.

Your CQC position. Administering medicines intravenously removes the consulting room exception entirely, as our guide to CQC registration for private GPs sets out. Prescribing does not, but the two questions arrive together for any clinic building a private service.

A checklist before you prescribe privately

Apply for your private prescriber identification number well before you need it
Order FP10PCD forms and store them securely, as they are controlled stationery
Never use FP10 for private patients
Know which of your patients are NHS and which are private, and do not charge the former for prescriptions
Record every prescription in the clinical notes, with the indication as well as the drug
Set up the register and storage before the first controlled drug arrives, not after

The record-keeping point is the one that matters years later. A prescription recorded without the reasoning behind it is difficult to defend if it is questioned. Contemporaneous notes, attributable to you and amendable only in a way that leaves the original visible, are what stands up. Systems like Atlacare lock a note on sign off and keep a versioned audit trail, which is the standard prescribing records should meet.

This is general information about prescribing arrangements, not clinical or legal advice. Requirements differ across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and are updated. Confirm the current position with NHS Prescription Services, your local pharmaceutical committee or your indemnity provider before prescribing privately.

Sources: Community Pharmacy England, dispensing controlled drugs · NHSBSA, private controlled drug prescriptions · Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001