Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made, if any, of the average cost of the purchase of a dental practice.

No estimate has been made of the number of different owners of dental practices nor of the average cost of purchase of dental practices.

Any person who provides regulated activity in England must be registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). In order to obtain a registration with the CQC, a dental practice is assessed against the CQC’s registration assessment framework to assess if applicants will provide services that are safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs and well-led. As part of the registration process, checks are made on Directors listed in the application and any individuals nominated by the provider company to be held legally responsible for carrying on the regulated activities applied for. If a practice cannot meet the standards set out within the framework, the CQC will refuse the application. The Dentists Act 1984 lays out restrictions on carrying on the business of dentistry.