Applying to work with NACAP data

Healthcare professionals, academic bodies and other related parties can apply to use NACAP data for research and analysis purposes. This page and linked guide to requesting NACAP data give information on what NACAP can offer you, how to access our data and the timeframes and fees involved.

What data are publicly available?

Most NACAP audit data are routinely reported, and aggregated data from our reports are freely available at Find open data (data.gov.uk). Search ‘NACAP’ for a list of all available data files including a summary of data items. If you are unsure whether our publicly available data meet your needs or have difficulty navigating our data, please contact us at nacap@rcp.ac.uk for assistance. If our publicly available data do not meet your needs, please see How to apply for data not publicly available for information on the data application process.

How to apply for data not publicly available

Several levels of data are not publicly available, including patient-level data and COVID-impacted data collected between March 2020 and March 2021, which will not be published. To access this data, you will need to follow an application process. To view what you should expect and need to do, depending on the complexity of your data request, please refer to our Guide to requesting NACAP data in the downloads section at the bottom of this page. Further information is available from HQIP on Health Data Access and designing your data project, and NHS Digital on Fundamentals of using routinely collected healthcare data in research.

Data application process in brief

Before formally applying for data, you should submit a NACAP Data Request Scoping Form which can be found at the bottom of this page. The NACAP team will review this to ensure your request meets certain criteria (see Guide to requesting NACAP data).
If your data request scoping form is approved, you will be asked to fill in a Data Access Request Form (see below) for review by NACAP’s Research Committee. The Committee will approve your request for submission to HQIP (NACAP’s funding body) or, in the event it is unsuccessful, provide feedback on their decision.
The NACAP team will inform the applicant of HQIP’s decision. HQIP may request clarifications or advise that further approvals are needed, in which case NACAP will advise applicants on the next steps.

Please note that there may be charges involved in processing your application and data release from the RCP, Crown database and HQIP. These are explained in the Guide to requesting NACAP data.