Name: Addresses delivering NHS dental treatment, by English town, April 2016 to May 2026
Creator: Dentist Locator
License: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

What the figures show

−13% NHS dental contracts delivering treatment, over the last ten years. 7,255 in April 2016, 6,288 in May 2026.
−16% adults seen over the same ten years, from 21,127,191 to 17,666,366.
+8% children seen, which rose while the adult figure fell. It is the one measure here that is higher than it was in 2016.
−17% adults seen against April 2019, the last April before the pandemic. Children over the same period are +2%.
+22% treatment delivered since April 2022, the first April after restrictions ended. Recovery from the closures is real, and it has not returned activity to 2016.
−4% contracts in the last twelve months, so the fall has slowed but not stopped.

Every figure on this page is computed from the NHS's own monthly record. The method is set out in full below, and the underlying data is free to download.

Where these figures come from

The NHS Business Services Authority publishes a monthly record of general dental activity in England. Each row is one NHS dental contract, and it carries the practice postcode and the amount of NHS treatment delivered that month. The full dataset is free to download from the NHSBSA open data portal under the Open Government Licence.

We use that record on this site. It is what tells a search on Dentist Locator whether a practice is currently doing NHS work, and we take the new release each month. This page publishes the same data, broken down by town.

The record begins in April 2016. What follows uses one month a year, always April, so that seasonal variation cannot be mistaken for a trend, together with the most recent month.

Five measures, and what each one counts

The record supports several different counts. They answer different questions and they move at different rates, so it is worth being clear which is which.

Contracts: NHS dental contracts that delivered any treatment in the month. One practice can hold more than one.
Addresses: Distinct postcodes where treatment was delivered. Where several practices share a building, the record cannot say which holds the contract, so the address is the only unit that can be counted without guessing.
Units of dental activity: The NHS measure of how much work was done. A check-up counts as one unit, a filling as three, a crown as twelve. It measures volume of treatment, not people.
Adults seen: Adults who attended in the previous 24 months. Counted across every contract in the record, including the few that reported no treatment in the month itself, because a patient seen last year still counts in a rolling 24 month figure.
Children seen: Children who attended in the previous 12 months. Counted the same way as the adult figure. A shorter window, so the two are not directly comparable with each other.

The same figures over four periods

The decline in NHS dentistry is long established and has been documented repeatedly, most recently in August 2026 by the Nuffield Trust, whose analysis was widely reported. Nothing here contradicts that work.

Most reporting compares the present with a decade ago. Set against three other starting points, the same five measures give four different pictures.

The first three measures count only contracts that delivered treatment in the month named. The two patient measures count every contract in the record, for the reason given above. The difference between the two bases is about two tenths of one per cent and it does not move any figure in the table by more than a tenth of a point.

Change to May 2026 from	Contracts	Addresses	Units of activity	Adults seen	Children seen
April 2016 to May 2026the last ten years	−13%	−13%	−10%	−16%	+8%
April 2019 to May 2026from the last April before the pandemic	−10%	−11%	−5%	−17%	+2%
April 2022 to May 2026from the first April after restrictions ended	−5%	−7%	+22%	+18%	+32%
May 2025 to May 2026the last twelve months	−4%	−1%	+3%	+1%	+3%

Each cell is the change in that measure between the start of the period and May 2026. The counts behind every cell are in the table below.

What the four periods show

Over ten years, every measure has fallen except the number of children seen, which has risen by 7.7%.

Since April 2022, every measure has risen except the number of contracts and addresses, which have continued to fall. Units of activity are up by 22.2%, adults seen by 18.2% and children seen by 32.4% over that period, while the number of addresses delivering treatment is down by 7.3%.

Those two movements have run in opposite directions for four years: fewer premises, more treatment going through each of them. In the last twelve months the pattern is the same at a smaller scale, with contracts and addresses still falling and every other measure slightly up.

The one measure that has not returned to where it stood before the pandemic is the number of adults seen, which remains 17.2% below April 2019. The number of children seen is 2.0% above it.

The counts behind the table

April 2016 to May 2026

Measure	Then	Now	Change
Contracts delivering treatment	7,255	6,288	−13%
Addresses delivering treatment	6,287	5,466	−13%
Units of dental activity	6,469,668	5,852,710	−10%
Adults seen	21,127,191	17,666,366	−16%
Children seen	6,424,472	6,920,570	+8%

April 2019 to May 2026

Measure	Then	Now	Change
Contracts delivering treatment	6,958	6,288	−10%
Addresses delivering treatment	6,107	5,466	−11%
Units of dental activity	6,164,057	5,852,710	−5%
Adults seen	21,345,174	17,666,366	−17%
Children seen	6,782,275	6,920,570	+2%

April 2022 to May 2026

Measure	Then	Now	Change
Contracts delivering treatment	6,639	6,288	−5%
Addresses delivering treatment	5,899	5,466	−7%
Units of dental activity	4,791,255	5,852,710	+22%
Adults seen	14,946,023	17,666,366	+18%
Children seen	5,227,267	6,920,570	+32%

May 2025 to May 2026

Measure	Then	Now	Change
Contracts delivering treatment	6,521	6,288	−4%
Addresses delivering treatment	5,537	5,466	−1%
Units of dental activity	5,711,638	5,852,710	+3%
Adults seen	17,423,700	17,666,366	+1%
Children seen	6,706,706	6,920,570	+3%

Children and adults have not followed the same path

Both fell sharply when practices closed in 2020. Only one has recovered.

Adults seen, indexed to 2016 Children seen, indexed to 2016

Your town

Search for a town below. Towns with fewer than eight dental practices are not listed.

Town

See the practices in this town

April 2020 appears in the data and reads close to zero everywhere. Dental practices were closed by government instruction that month. It records the lockdown rather than the town, and no comparison should be drawn from it.

What the town figures show

Of the 292 towns, 152 had fewer addresses delivering NHS treatment in May 2026 than in April 2016, 104 had the same number, and 36 had more.

Where the number falls, it usually falls gradually rather than in one step. A common pattern is a town losing an address every year or two across the decade, with no single year standing out. Individual towns are in the search above.

What this measure does not tell you

It counts addresses, not appointments. A practice delivering a small amount of NHS treatment and one delivering a great deal each count once, so two towns with the same number of addresses can offer very different amounts of care. That is why the units of dental activity figure is given alongside.

It says nothing about why a figure has changed. Contracts are held and returned for reasons the record does not capture. We have not tested any explanation and do not offer one.

A post town is a Royal Mail sorting area rather than a council boundary. Ampthill and Kempston both sit within the Bedford post town.

Method

What is counted. For each town and each month, the number of distinct postcodes among the dental practices we hold in that town where a contract record in the NHS file shows units of dental activity greater than zero.

The practice list. The Care Quality Commission's published register of regulated locations in England, taken on 21 May 2026. NHS units commissioned outside general dental services, such as dental access centres and dental hospitals, are excluded, because they cannot appear in a general dental activity record and would otherwise be counted as though they offered no NHS care.

Why counts and not percentages. We hold one practice register, from 2026. A percentage for 2016 would divide a 2016 numerator by a 2026 denominator, so only counts are shown at town level.

What that means for the figures. Every year is measured against the practices operating today, so a practice that closed before 2026 appears in no year. If closures were disproportionately NHS practices, the falls shown here are smaller than the real ones.

Every town in this record

Each link opens the town's own page, listing every practice we hold there.

Finding a dentist

Dentist Locator lists dental practices across the United Kingdom. You can filter by whether a practice is currently doing NHS work, alongside treatments, opening hours and access. Search the directory.

Source: NHS Business Services Authority, English Contractor Monthly General Dental Activity, April 2016 to May 2026, and the Care Quality Commission Care Directory, taken 21 May 2026. Both published under the Open Government Licence.

How NHS dentistry changed, 2016 to 2026