Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many dentists were registered with the General Dental Council in each financial year since 2010-11; and of those registered dentists how many and what proportion provided some NHS care.

The General Dental Council (GDC) is the independent regulator of dentists and dental care professionals (DCPs) practising in the United Kingdom and enforces the standards they must adhere to. In order to practise in the UK, all dentists and DCPs are required to hold registration with the GDC.

The Department does not hold data on how many dentists have been registered with the GDC. Data on the registration of dentists and DCPs with the GDC is held by the GDC. The GDC regularly publish registration reports on their website at the following link:

https://www.gdc-uk.org/about-us/what-we-do/the-registers/registration-reports

The following table shows the number of dentists with National Health Service activity in England only between the years 2010/11 to 2022/23:

Number of dentists with NHS activity in England

Source: Data is from the NHS Dental Statistics for England Annual Report 2017-18 (Workforce Table 8a) and the NHS Dental Statistics for England Annual Report 2022-23 (Workforce Table 1a). The reports are available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-dental-statistics