Prescription charges in England will be frozen this year – for the first time since 2022.

The charge for a single item will remain at £9.90 in 2025-26, the government has announced.

Three-month and annual prescriptions prepayment certificates will also be frozen and existing exemptions will continue. Charges only apply in England as prescriptions are free in the rest of the UK.

Nearly nine in 10 prescriptions in England are already dispensed free of charge, with children, over 60s, pregnant women, people with certain medical conditions and those on lower incomes exempt from paying.

A three-month prescription prepayment certificate costs £32.05 while a 12-month certificate costs £114.50.

Rachel Power, chief executive of Patients Association which campaigns for improvements in health and social care, said freezing the charges was a “positive step”.

But she warned that it did little to tackle the “deep inequalities” in what she described as an outdated system.

She said the medical exemption criteria had remained virtually unchanged since the late 1960s, with nearly three million people in England living with long-term conditions not eligible for an exemption because they were not recognised 60 years ago or people rarely survived into adulthood.

Conditions which are not currently on the medical exemption list include Parkinson’s disease, cystic fibrosis and motor neurone disease.

“We urge the government to go further – to commit to a full review of the medical exemption list and prescription charges,” Ms Power added.

Health is a devolved area of government. Prescription fees were abolished by Wales in 2007, Northern Ireland in 2010 and Scotland in 2011 under the powers available to their respective governments.