The NHS Information Centre publishes report on dentists' earnings

The NHS Information Centre today published Dental Earnings and Expenses – England and Wales, 2007/08 detailing dentists' pay in 2007/08 – the second year of the new dental contracts.

The report considers only the earnings and expenses of full and part-time, self-employed primary care dentists who undertook some NHS work in England and Wales in the year, and covers both their NHS and private work. It shows that in 2007/08:

  • All self-employed dentists earned on average £89,062 (before tax).
  • Practising dentists who held a contract with a Primary Care Trust (PCT) or Local Health Board (LHB) to provide NHS dental services earned on average £126,807 (before tax) with average gross earnings of £345,651 and average expenses of £218,843.
  • Dentists who worked in a practice but who did not hold a contract with a PCT or LHB, earned on average £65,697 (before tax), with average gross earnings of £99,208 and average expenses of £33,512. The report also shows that in 2007/08:
  • In England, all self-employed dentists earned on average £88,790 (before tax), with contract-holding dentists earning on average £126,527 (before tax) and dentists without a contract with a PCT earning on average £65,668 (before tax).
  • In Wales, all self-employed dentists earned on average £93,924 (before tax) with contract-holding dentists earning on average £131,287 (before tax) and dentists without a contract with an LHB earning on average £66,259 (before tax).

Dentists' earnings for 2007/08 cannot be compared with those of 2006/07 because the scheduling of payments made to some dentists following the introduction of the new contractual arrangements on 1 April 2006 had a one-off effect in that financial year.

The report also looks at earnings and expenses by the working patterns of the dentists, their age and gender, their level of orthodontic activity and the Strategic Health Authority in which they worked.

The NHS Information Centre also published a separate report today which looks at dental earnings in Northern Ireland. Dental Earnings and Expenses, Northern Ireland 2007/08 Experimental Statistics shows all self-employed dentists earned on average £89,756 (before tax), with contract-holding dentists earning on average £121,174 (before tax) and dentists without a contract earning on average £66,134 (before tax).

The statistics for the report are experimental. Differences in contractual arrangements between Northern Ireland and England and Wales mean that comparisons between the two reports cannot be made. The findings of both reports will help the Review Body on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration make their next set of recommendations on dental remuneration.

The NHS Information Centre's chief executive Tim Straughan said: “The England and Wales report looks at earnings in the second year of the new contractual system and reveals the average earnings of NHS dentists varies greatly depending on whether they personally held a contract with their Primary Care organisation.”

The report for England and Wales is at: www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/dentalearnexp0708

The report for Northern Ireland is at: www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/dentalearnexp0708ni

ENDS

Notes to editors

  1. The NHS Information Centre is England's authoritative, independent source of health and social care information. It works with more than 300 health and social care providers nationwide to provide the facts and figures that help the NHS and social services run effectively. Its role is to collect data, analyse it and convert it into useful information which helps providers improve their services and supports academics, researchers, regulators and policymakers in their work. The NHS Information Centre also produces a wide range of statistical publications each year across a number of areas including: primary care, health and lifestyles, screening, hospital care, population and geography, social care and workforce and pay statistics.
  2. A new dental contract was introduced in England and Wales on 1st April 2006. One element of the new contractual arrangements was a move away from paying dentists for individual treatment items to a system whereby dentists are remunerated for an agreed level of dental activity. They have moved away from a retrospective payment system to one which they are paid in monthly instalments. The timing of payments made to some dentists following the introduction of the new contractual arrangements had a one-off effect on earnings in 2006/07.
  3. The report for England and Wales was agreed by a joint working group made up of The NHS Information Centre, and representatives from the Department of Health, the Welsh Assembly Government, the British Dental Association, the Secretariat for the Doctors' and Dentists' Review Body, the NHS Business Services Authority Dental Services, and the National Association of Specialist Dental Accountants. The report for Northern Ireland was agreed by a joint working group made up of The NHS Information Centre, and representatives from the Department of Health, the Northern Ireland Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, the British Dental Association, the Secretariat for the Doctors' and Dentists' Review Body, the NHS Business Services Authority Dental Services, and the National Association of Specialist Dental Accountants. It is the first time The NHS Information Centre has produced earnings and expenses data for dentists in Northern Ireland and, as such, these have been labelled ‘experimental statistics', which are new official statistics that are under going evaluation. A key part of the “Experimental Statistics” label is user engagement in the evaluation of those statistics, and the NHS IC invites readers to comment on this publication, which will help inform the next report. Comments may be sent to enquiries@ic.nhs.uk.
  4. In the report for England and Wales, results are displayed for Providing-Performer dentists, who contract with local health bodies to provide an agreed level of dental services and also perform dental services, and for Performer Only dentists, who perform dental services but do not hold a contract with a local health body.
  5. The population is sourced from data provided by NHS Dental Services, with the initial inclusion criteria being those dentists who reported having undertaken NHS work during 2007/08. In some cases, a subsequent sample was determined from the results of a survey, the ‘NHS Business and Provider and Performer Arrangement Enquiry', administered to all dentists (who had some NHS activity recorded within 2006/07 or 2007/08) across England and Wales. The source for the data in respect of earnings and expenses is the self assessment (SA) tax return held on the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) SA system, which covers earnings from all self-employed sources, including private practice. Analyses were carried out on an anonymised tax data for dentists with an accounting year ending in the final quarter of 2006/07 by HMRC statisticians; only aggregated non disclosive data were supplied to the NHS IC.
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