An overall contract uplift of 3.55% has been confirmed for NHS dentists in England, which experts have deemed a ‘real-terms pay cut’.
Confirmed today (19 September), the 3.55% increase for 2025/26 does not meet the 4% uplift recommended by the Review Body on Doctors and Dentists’ Remuneration in May.
The British Dental Association (BDA) said this represents ‘another real-terms pay cut to England’s struggling NHS dental service’.
Increases to national insurance and the national living wage, combined with rising lab fees and material costs, have seen practice overheads grow sharply in the past year. The 2.39% expenses element of the uplift is around a quarter of the BDA’s estimate of the amount necessary to cover these increased costs.
In May, the government announced a consultation on the true cost of delivering NHS dentistry. However, the results are yet to be released.
The BDA said there has been ‘no attempt to keep pace with the surging costs of delivering NHS dentistry’.
Delays to pay awards
The uplift is expected to come into force from next month. The 2024/25 award was announced in January, which the BDA said was a ‘record-breaking delay’.
The association is set to provide evidence for the 2026/7 pay award later in September, stating that there is ‘no excuse for future delays’. The government has named ensuring that awards are in place at the outset of the financial year as an objective.
Shiv Pabary, chair of the BDA General Dental Practice Committee, said: ‘Once again, government has chosen not to follow our pay review body’s recommendations.
‘Awards will reach practices six months late and fail to reflect the soaring costs of delivering NHS dentistry. If ministers want this service to have a future, they must turn the page.’
How has the dental profession responded?
Neil Richardson, dental regional manager at Wesleyan
Dentists will be disappointed that this contract uplift falls below the pay review body’s recommendation.
At a time when the cost of running a practice is rising, dentists need all the support they can get. Adequate funding isn’t just important for the basic delivery of NHS services – it’s essential for supporting the morale of and retaining the dental professionals that show up to provide vital care to the public every day.
As we have said before, if we want a resilient public dental health service, we have to create a situation where dentists want to work for the NHS – and that means providing the resources they need.
Nishma Sharma, dentist
Running costs are increasing and practice owners are struggling – especially NHS practices – so the uplift is very welcome but goes nowhere near enough to cover the costs of inflation.
Practice owners face huge financial pressures from staff and nurse wage increases, and as many leave dentistry for other jobs and nurses turn to locum work, it is difficult to retain a workforce.
The uplift is good news ultimately, but it’s not going to have a profound impact on the dental team as a whole. It would be great if the uplift was enough for everybody to get a guaranteed increase, including nurses and receptionists.
Many good practices will, of course, give their nurses a yearly uplift in their wages and practice owners do deserve this as costs are ridiculously high. If the contract was fairer though, associates would also see the benefit of the uplift rather than it being benefitting providers solely.
Nigel Jones, strategy director at Practice Plan
While disappointing, this decision shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
For the conspiracy theorists, this might be seen as further evidence of an attempt to constructively dismiss dentists from the NHS. For those favouring a blunder theory, it could be attributed to a lack of understanding of the business pressures facing NHS contract holders battling to recruit and retain team members while dealing with other escalating, dental-specific running costs.
However, I suspect it’s more a reflection of the financial reality of the world in which we live leaving very little room for an increase in the budget allocation for NHS dentistry. Comments from the minister for care Stephen Kinnock have suggested as much.
Political expediency is likely to hamper open discussion about the need to channel finite resources to those in greatest financial as well as clinical need. However, confirmation of this uplift will no doubt prove to be the tipping point for many dentists previously loyal to the ideals of the NHS and will edge us ever closer to a core service created by stealth.
Vinay Rathod, owner of VR Financial Solutions
Whilst any increase to NHS pay is a welcome one, many will feel that this falls short in many ways – short on the 4% recommended by the review body; short on keeping up with inflation – currently 3.8%; short on reflecting the considerable increase in cost of running an NHS dental practice.
In real terms, it’s just a smaller pay-cut – but income in NHS dentistry has rarely kept up with inflation. One of the most commonly-voiced criticisms of the current contract is its failure to keep up with real life costs.
The increase will be swallowed up at practice level to absorb the impact of rising national insurance costs, minimum wage, and lab/material costs.
The public have little knowledge of the way NHS dentistry is delivered – by privately owned practices with limited funding. Is this simply another blow to dentistry to push the profession itself to reconsider the viability of the NHS so that our government cannot be blamed for the privatisation of another public service?
We continue to see the exodus from NHS dentistry, aspirations toward private practice are popular, and practice owners appear to be getting tired of allowing the NHS to be supported by their and their staff’s own sacrifices.
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