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TABLE OF CONTENTS


Introduction

Background

The NHS England Guidance for the National Seasonal Influenza immunisation programme 2025-26 outlines the following vaccination schedule:

 

From 1st September 2025, the following groups are eligible:
  • Pregnant women
  • Children aged 2 or 3 on 31 August 2025
  • Primary school-aged children (Reception to Year 6) - School programme only
  • Secondary school-aged children (Years 7 to 11) - School programme only
  • Children aged 6 months to under 18 years in clinical risk groups
 
From October 2025 (exact date to be confirmed), additional groups include:
  • Adults aged 65+
  • Adults aged 18 to 64 in clinical risk groups (as per the Green Book)
  • Residents in long-stay care homes
  • Carers (in receipt of allowance or main carer for elderly/disabled)
  • Close contacts of immunocompromised individuals
  • Frontline social care workers without employer-led occupational health 


Recommended Vaccines (JCVI)
  • 6m–1y: TIVc (2nd: TIVe)
  • 2–17y: LAIV (2nd: TIVc / 3rd: TIVe)
  • 18–49y: TIVr/TIVc (2nd: TIVe)
  • 50–59y: TIVr/TIVc/aTIV (2nd: TIVe)
  • 60–64y: TIVr/TIVc/aTIV/TIV-HD (2nd: TIVe)
  • 65+ (on 31/03/25): TIVr/aTIV/TIV-HD (2nd: TIVc) 

 

How Ardens help?

Ardens resources support practices in planning, recalling, delivering, and evaluating vaccination uptake - while also helping forecast and prepare for the next vaccination season.


⚠️ Please note: 
  • Ardens searches use SNOMED codes, while the Green Book uses clinical definitions
  • Not all eligibility criteria translate directly into coded data
  • Business rules for payment may differ from clinical eligibility
  • Clinical judgement should guide decisions in ambiguous cases


Plan

Review before 

Before sending out any invites, we recommend reviewing the following reports. These help ensure your invite lists are accurate and clinically appropriate. Some examples include:


  • PSD groups (if needed): Identifies patients who had flu vaccines in previous seasons and may require a new Patient Specific Direction (PSD) this year. A prescriber should review each patient individually and record the PSD using the Ardens flu protocol.


⚠️Please note: These patients need to be reviewed individually and not in batches to ensure that it's clinically safe to administer the vaccine and protect staff administering it. For further information, see the CQC mythbusters.


  • Vaccine suitability: Check for clinical reasons a patient should not receive a particular vaccine, or may need an alternative:
    • Alternative vaccine - 6m–17y + aspirin in last 6m (contraindicates LAIV).
    • Recorded previously - Lives with immunocompromised person, health and social care worker (both before 01/04/2025).
    • Current contraindications - As recorded last season, egg allergy, specific contraindication this season.
    • Incorrect decline code - Seasonal influenza vaccination declined but with a non-seasonal decline code.
    • End of life - Influenza vaccination not indicated.
  • Eligibility coding: Ensure patient records reflect current eligibility so they appear in invite and payment reports:
    • Needs influenza vaccination - Various conditions where the code should be added/re-added on/after 01/09/2025:
    • Household contacts of immunosuppressed - Add 'Lives with immunocompromised person' code using the vaccination template if applicable.
    • Invite children aged 6m–17y at risk or pregnant (excluding childhood ES) - Check for eligible children outside standard school programme.
    • Age-related eligibility - Patients aged 18–64y who are at risk or pregnant; those turning 18 during season.
  • Status verification: Confirm whether a patient’s recorded status is still correct, and update if not:
    • Pregnancy - Confirm still pregnant; update coding if delivery or pregnancy loss.
    • BMI ≥ 40 - Update if last recorded before 01/04/2023.
    • Care home resident/housebound/carer - Confirm or add 'no longer' codes if no longer applicable. 
    • Persistent contraindication - Review outdated or incorrect allergy/contraindication codes. Mark in error to ensure re-invite where appropriate. 
    • Long-term indication - Confirm patients coded with a long-term indication for influenza vaccination.
 

 Navigate to Ardens Searches > 3.15 Vaccinations - Flu 2025-26 > 0.2 Review before.


 

Cohorts and due

Use these searches to estimate vaccine needs and plan stock orders. They are not designed for sending invitations:
  • Cohort reports: Show the total number of patients in each eligible group, regardless of vaccination or declined status.
  • Due reports: Focus specifically on patients who are still outstanding for vaccination.


⚠️ Please note: Patients may appear in more than one cohort. These reports do not remove patients once invite codes are added, so using them for invites may result in duplicate communications.


Navigate to Ardens Searches > 3.15 Vaccinations - Flu 2025-26 > 0.3. Cohorts and due.


 

Ordering

To support planning ahead of the vaccination season, use the following Ardens folders to review patient counts by age group and eligibility. You can also use these searches throughout the season to understand your eligible populations. The ‘Due’ searches give a helpful estimate of patients still needing vaccination, which can be useful for placing top-up orders later in the season.
 

Navigate to Ardens Searches > 3.15 Vaccinations - Flu 2025-26 > 0.1. Ordering and planning.



Recall 

These resources help GP practices efficiently manage the Seasonal Influenza vaccination programme by identifying eligible patients, organising invitations and follow-ups and planning vaccine orders - including special arrangements for care home and housebound patients.


Invites

Invite reports are grouped into the following folders: 

  1. Invite - September Onwards - Early groups (children, pregnant women, under-18 in risk groups).
  2. Invite - October Onwards - Later groups (65+, at-risk adults, carers, close contacts of immunocompromised individuals).
  3. Consider 2nd Vaccine - 6m–8y at-risk with no previous flu vaccine should be offered a second dose 4 weeks after their first.


⚠️ Please note: 
  • Patients who turn 18 during September (and are not pregnant) are excluded from the September invite reports but will be included in the October invite reports (payment rules). If you wish to manage them differently, use the report ‘Currently 17 and turning 18 in September (not pregnant) – September payment applies only to under-18s and pregnancy (Included in invites from October onwards by default)’.
  • Care home residents and housebound patients are excluded from the main invite suite, patients included in the 04. Visits folder.


Exporting & messaging: You can export invite lists to CSV and send messages using Accurx, or another third-party platform. Please see this support article for further information on how to do this.  



Invitation coding: After inviting a patient, ensure the appropriate invitation SNOMED code is added to their record. This ensures they move to the correct 2nd or 3rd invite list. Always verify codes before use. 


Influenza vaccination first telephone invitation

1095821000000105

Influenza vaccination first verbal invitation

860151000000103

Influenza vaccination invitation email

844941000000103

Influenza vaccination invitation first email

844961000000102

Influenza vaccination invitation first letter sent

200481000000107

Influenza vaccination invitation first short message service text message sent

1484831000000102

Influenza vaccination invitation letter sent

315641001

Influenza vaccination invitation second email

844981000000106

Influenza vaccination invitation second letter sent

200491000000109

Influenza vaccination invitation second short message service text message sent

1484841000000106

Influenza vaccination invitation short message service text message sent

1484821000000104

Influenza vaccination invitation third email

845001000000101

Influenza vaccination invitation third letter sent

200501000000103

Influenza vaccination invitation third short message service text message sent

1484851000000109

Influenza vaccination second telephone invitation

1095831000000107

Influenza vaccination second verbal invitation

860171000000107

Influenza vaccination: third telephone invitation

1095841000000103

Influenza vaccination third verbal invitation 

860291000000101

Influenza vaccination verbal invitation

761311000000109

Invitation by telephone for influenza vaccination

737041000

 

⚠️ Please note: Always check the code each time when adding to the patient record. Ardens are not responsible or liable for the codes above and any incorrect code being batch added to the patient records.

 

Navigate to Ardens Searches > 3.15 Vaccinations - Flu 2025-26 > 0.4. Invites.



Practices can run the reports, then:

  • Click on View Results to open the report
  • Click on Export > CSV > OK > Save to location
  • Open the saved report and add filters to sort information by age, contact method or LD/SMI/Dementia/EOL/RA.


Visits 

Separate visit reports are provided for housebound and care home residents so practices can use the list of patients to support administration of the seasonal influenza vaccination outside of the practice:

  • Care home residents (housebound / not housebound)
  • Housebound but not in a care home


These patients are excluded from all invitation reports, so use the Visits reports to plan and organise their vaccinations.


! Remember to review relevant reports in folder "02. Review before" first to ensure the patient lists are accurate.  


Navigate to Ardens Searches > 3.15 Vaccinations - Flu 2025-26 > 0.5. Visits. 



Deliver

Below information to be added once resources are available:


Administer

Recording activity via a template

Recording activity via a protocol


Evaluate

These resources help practices manage and monitor the Seasonal Influenza vaccination programme by identifying data issues, tracking vaccination uptake, forecasting future eligibility, and providing dashboards to analyse and target patient groups more effectively.

 

Review after 

To help ensure accurate payment and data integrity, several data quality reports are available. These reports highlight potential data entry issues that could affect payment eligibility. Common data quality scenarios include:
  • Needs influenza vaccination - vaccinated but not in business rules eligibility - Add 'Needs influenza immunisation' dated on or after 1st September 2025 if eligible.
  • Duplicate or incorrect vaccine codes - Remove duplicates, correct errors, or add correct code using the Ardens Seasonal Influenza template (or protocol if EMIS).
  • Inactive SMS invite codes - Replace with active invite code.
  • Dose sequence errors - Add missing first dose or correct “given elsewhere” entries.
  • Out-of-season vaccinations - Review August entries and September entries for 18+ non-pregnant patients.


Navigate to Ardens Searches > 3.15 Vaccinations - Flu 2025-26 > 0.6. Review after.


Payment

  • PPA Claims (FP34D) - Assist with vaccine cost claims without needing prescriptions, as considered a 'high volume vaccine'. 
  • CQRS - Track patients who meet the requirements for payment claims. 

 

Audit 

  • Audit - Monitor vaccine uptake by cohort, low uptake and vaccines given by GP practice or other healthcare professionals. 
  • Co-administered with COVID (EMIS only) - Identifies patients who have received both the flu and COVID vaccines. 
  • Immform (EMIS only) - Supports national reporting submissions.


Navigate to Ardens Searches > 3.15 Vaccinations - Flu 2025-26 > 0.7. Activity.



Insights

For Ardens Manager subscribers, the Vaccinations dashboard provides a clear visual overview of:
  • Eligible cohorts
  • Number of invitations sent
  • Vaccination uptake rates
 
You can also filter and analyse data by:
  • Clinical risk groups
  • Low uptake groups
 
This helps you prioritise and target specific patient populations more effectively.


Login to Ardens Manager and access Services > Vaccinations. 



Next Year

Estimates

These reports help practices plan ahead by identifying patients likely to become eligible for the 2026–27 Seasonal Influenza season based on 2025-26 eligibility criteria. For example, they include patients who are currently 64 and not at risk, but will turn 65 by 1st September 2027.


Navigate to Ardens Searches > 3.15 Vaccinations - Flu 2025-26 > 0.8. Estimates for next year (2026-27). 



Additional Learning

To further your understanding of the Seasonal Influenza vaccination programme and how to make the most of Ardens resources:

 

 If you require any further assistance on the process above, please contact Ardens support on: 
support@ardens.org.uk