The British Dental Association has stressed that the BBC’s latest story about the £900 million of budget handed back by dentists during an access crisis reflects the perversity of the broken contract dentists are working within.
However, as Minister for Care Stephen Kinnock told parliament on 13 January, almost all this money has been recycled to fund recovery programmes, with total underspend for NHS general dental services in England falling from £392 million in 2023-24 to just £36 million, a fall from 10% to less than 1% of the gross budget.
The professional body stress these unused funds have long been the traditional excuse from successive governments for not funding NHS dentistry appropriately. It warns that this clawback is the result of chronic underfunding, with dentists now losing money delivering NHS care, and unable to fill vacancies. Not a penny of new investment has been pledged by Government to rebuild the struggling service.
Dentist leaders say the time has come for a sustainable funding settlement that covers dentists costs and addresses sizable unmet need for NHS care.1 The BDA says without action here, pledged reform of the NHS contract may be doomed from the outset.
BDA Chair Eddie Crouch said:
"The fact dentists couldn't even spend their budget has always been cited by Ministers as the reason they won't invest in dentistry.
"This was never about lack of demand. It was about underfunded practices struggling to meet punishing targets and fill vacancies.
“It's the simple fact we now have dentists losing money delivering NHS care. It might suit the Treasury, but no healthcare professional can be expected to work this way.
"These underspends have all but vanished, but the access crisis is still with us. The last excuse for austerity in NHS dentistry has left the building."
Notes
- BDA analysis of the GP Survey, 2025, by Ipsos, extrapolating data in line with ONS midyear population estimates, places unmet need at close to 14m adults or over 1 in 4 of England’s adult population. Unmet need figures for 2025 were almost unchanged on 2024 levels, at around 13.8m. 5.7m adult patients tried and failed to secure NHS care in the last 2 years – a fall of 700,000 on the previous year’s figures, but with a corresponding surge in the number of people who had effectively given up trying, with the number of people not even attempting to make appointments as they didn’t think they could secure care up by over half a million to 5.9m. The costs of care pushed 1.3 million away, and 880,000 indicated they were on waiting lists, all up on the previous year’s figures. Prior to Covid, levels of unmet need hovered consistently at around 1 in 10 of the adult population.