NHS Dental Charges up by 2.3%

Details: Published: Tuesday, 11 March 2025 17:00; Written by Peter Ingle; Hits: 1384

This year‘s April 1^st increases in NHS dental patient charges for England have been announced. The British Dental Association has issued a combative statement which emphasises that such ‘stealth cuts‘ will not put a penny into struggling practices.

In England, patient charges will rise by an average of 2.3% from 1 April 2025. A band 1 treatment will increase from £26.80 to £27.40, band 2 from £73.50 to £75.30, and band 3 will go from £319.10 to £326.70.

Whilst the headline figure is below the current level of inflation, for many years it was an economic target to keep inflation under 2%.

In its statement, the BDA has demanded assurances the new Government will not follow the established pattern of treating the increase as a substitute for state investment. With NHS dentistry’s budget stuck at around £3bn for the last fifteen years, successive increases in patient charges mean that they contribute an ever increasing part of the total.

Working with campaign partners 38 Degrees, the BDA have called on the Chancellor and Health Secretary, to abandon the increase, and to ensure the coming Spending Review puts in place sustainable funding for the service. There is also a petition This is the BDA’s link The petition is live here.

Once again, the BDA have returned to the inadequacy of the Governments promised 700,000 urgent appointments, and accused them of changing their promises, from new money, to simply recycling existing underspends.

Polling conducted by YouGov for the BDA in 2023 found nearly a quarter (23%) of respondents in England delayed or went without NHS dental treatment for reasons of cost. 45% said the price shaped the choice of treatment they had. Entitlements to free care are limited, with many Universal Credit recipients not being eligible.

Shiv Pabary, Chair of the British Dental Association’s General Dental Practice Committee said: “This hike is reheated austerity. It won’t put a penny into a struggling service. Our patients are paying more, just so Ministers can pay less.” Following the established line of placing responsibility with the Chancellor, he concluded: “Rachel Reeves will need to justify her stealth cuts to millions of patients.”

For 38 Degrees, Chief Executive Matthew McGregor described the increases as, “the wrong move at the wrong time - especially as the extra price tag won’t result in the improvements in dental care so many of us are desperate for.” He pointed out that they only applied to those, “lucky enough to even have access to an NHS dentist in the first place.”

Once, almost all GDPUK readers would have been eager to find out what the April 1^st changes to NHS dental patient charges would be, because their practices would be collecting them. It is a sign of the times that for an increasing number of dentists and their teams, today’s announcement of the 2025 increase will be of little interest.