OBJECTIVES: Given economic pressure on UK National Health Service resources, it has been recommended that general practitioners prescribe more low-cost, generic drugs as opposed to high-cost, proprietary drugs when a substitution can be made without compromising patient care. One of the Better Care Better Value (BCBV) indicators of good prescribing practice proposed by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement is an increase in the prescription of low-cost drugs for lipid modification. The objective of this analysis was to evaluate patterns of generic and proprietary prescribing of statins from 2007–2012 inclusive. METHODS: Prescription Cost Analysis databases from data.gov.uk were reviewed between 2007–2012. Data on the number of prescription items dispensed each year in the community in England for simvastatin and atorvastatin (as commonly-prescribed examples) were extracted, along with each drug’s preparation class: drugs prescribed and available generically, or drugs prescribed and dispensed by proprietary brand name. For both simvastatin and atorvastatin, the proportions of prescription items in the different preparation classes were compared each year. RESULTS: Proprietary simvastatin prescription items as a proportion of all simvastatin prescription items decreased each year, from 2.87% in 2007 (843,000 proprietary items) to 1.76% in 2012 (752,000 items), representing a proportional decrease of 39% in the 6-year period assessed. Proprietary atorvastatin prescription items as a proportion of all atorvastatin prescription items were close to 100% between 2007–2011 (approximately 11 million proprietary items each year), but fell to 30.55% in 2012 (3.9 million items), coinciding with the expiry of atorvastatin’s patent in May 2012. CONCLUSIONS: In England, prescribing of high-cost proprietary items for these two examples of lipid-modifying drugs has decreased since 2007, suggesting that the BCBV prescribing indicator for statins is being met. Such reductions, particularly as seen with atorvastatin in 2012, are likely to have a significant budget impact.