Dental Services
(asked on 15th June 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that strategic commissioners, including Surrey Heartlands and NHS Sussex, have the commissioning flexibility and tools required to attract new NHS dental providers into areas where NHS dental provision does not adequately meet local population need.
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning primary care services, including National Health Service dentistry and orthodontic services, to meet the needs of the local population. For the Guildford constituency, this is the Surrey Heartlands ICB.
Since 2024, a minimum unit of dental activity (UDA) value of £28 is in place to support practices with historically low UDA rates. ICBs have the flexibility to influence the UDA rate locally, which may help to support local interventions. The current differential UDA rates across England also allow providers to use differing pay rates for associate dentists to reflect the local market rates.
NHS England expects local commissioners to manage dental contracts actively and responsively, working with dental providers to redistribute contracted activity where appropriate and to rebase consistently underperforming contracts, helping to maximise the delivery of NHS dental care and improve access for patients.
Commissioners can use flexible commissioning where they identify a need that cannot be met effectively through the provision of mandatory services. In doing so, they must satisfy themselves that these arrangements are appropriate and offer good value for money. NHS England published guidance on flexible commissioning in 2023, which is available at the following link: