In July 2025 the Department of Health and Social Care published the 10 Year Health Plan for England. The publication followed extensive national consultation with stakeholders and public consultation. The Plan itself had a special focus on NHS dentistry, outlining the Government’s intention to continue with a focus on urgent dental care, the dental graduate tie in, improve access for children and expand water fluoridation in the north east of England. The Plan also committed to introducing changes to the dental contract in April 2026, and to longer term contract reform. The Impact Statement is the most recent publication relating to the 10 Year Plan following the Vision Working Group Reports, published in December 2025.
The Impact Statement published on 12 January 2026 explores some of the proposals set out in the 10 Year Plan in detail. The comments about NHS dentistry made in the Impact Statement are set out below (pages 6, 7 and 13):
“The plan aims to transform the NHS dental system. This includes a requirement for newly qualified dentists to practise in the NHS for a minimum period. Data from 2024 show that almost one-third of registered dentists are not contributing to NHS dentistry (around 11,000 out of around 35,000 registered) and may only be undertaking private practice. Increasing the number of NHS dentists will increase costs to the NHS of contracted activity but will constitute an additional return on the taxpayer investment of up to £200,000 per dentist on education and training. The scale of these impacts will depend on the number of dentists in scope and the length of time they are required to spend in the NHS, intended to be at least 3 years.”
“Making better use of the wider dental workforce could also create costs, associated with upskilling staff and changing ways of working to integrate with neighbourhood teams. There are potential benefits to the health system such as better patient access as staff working to the full scope of their practice could improve performance against dental services contracts. Timely access to dentistry for more people, if achieved, would be expected to reduce repeat urgent appointments and the burden on emergency departments.”
“A study from 2022 analysed urgent dental care attendances in primary care across the North East and Cumbria between 2013 and 2019 and found that 16.15% of urgent dental care visits were repeat appointments. Improving access to dentistry should improve health outcomes. In the 2 years leading up to June 2024, only around 40% of the adult population had seen an NHS dentist, and those who manage to get NHS services are often not those with the greatest need for them.”
“Timely access to dentistry is expected to reduce missed work and school days as people need fewer urgent appointments and spend less time in discomfort or pain. Ease of access is also likely to improve user satisfaction and experience.”
“Children will benefit from additional support on tooth-brushing. An independent evaluation of the Scottish Childsmile supervised toothbrushing scheme showed it decreased rates of dental caries among 5 year olds in Scotland from 32% in 2014 to 26% in 2020, with the programme particularly effective among socially disadvantaged groups.”
The full report is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69651a7699fbdc498faecd1f/impact-statement-10-year-health-plan.pdf
The LDC Confederation has recently agreed a position statement on the dental graduate tie in and on dental recalls given the statements about it in the consultation on the contract changes coming in to force this April.
We will continue to engage with the Department of Health and Social Care, and other stakeholders, to ensure that the voice of frontline NHS dentists is heard.
