The Government has moved to exempt key parts of the contract from uplifts. It is a very dangerous precedent, which opens the door to ministers and officials picking and choosing which elements of the total contract are worth bothering with.
The Department of Health and Social Care have chosen not to increase payments for quality improvement activities or funded appraisals for 2026-27, dubbing them as not 'core clinical activities'.
The headline uplift is confirmed at 3.31%, with 3.75% on pay and 2.23% for expenses, calculated using the Gross Domestic Product deflator, not any credible benchmarks of the real increases in practice costs. We had estimated that a 6.31% uplift was required to cover dental inflation.
"Dentists have got used to Government dressing up pay cuts as uplifts, but officials are now playing a very dangerous game setting aside key parts of our contract as unworthy of attention,” warns General Dental Practice Committee Chair Shiv Pabary.
"Quality improvement and funded appraisals are suddenly 'voluntary, targeted incentives', not core parts of our contract. Our members will be left wondering where this pick-and-mix approach will end."
