The NHS Dental Contract: What do the latest reforms mean for your practice?
2 February 2026
Improving access to dental care remains a key priority for patients, practices, and policymakers. It is a pertinent issue raised to MPs on the doorstep. Against this backdrop, the government confirmed a series of changes to the NHS dental contract in December, which are due to be introduced from April 2026.
Over the past year, Denplan has worked with policymakers and fed into sector consultations, drawing on insight from our expert members to ensure policy reform reflects the realities of day-to-day practice and the mixed model through which most dental care is delivered. While these reforms do not represent the full transformation dentistry needs, they mark an important step forward and will impact how practices deliver care in the years ahead.
In this blog, we set out what has been announced, what it means in practice, and where we believe further change is still needed.
The changes announced by the government focus on three broad areas:
Improving access to urgent and unscheduled care
Providing better support for patients with complex oral health needs
Making it easier for practices to deliver preventative care, particularly for children
Together, these measures signal a shift towards prioritising patients with the greatest need, while recognising the role that prevention plays in improving long term oral health outcomes.
Higher payments for urgent and unscheduled care
One of the most significant changes relates to urgent and unscheduled care. From April 2026, urgent care will no longer be paid at the current 1.2 UDA rate. Instead, average payments will increase by 76%, to £75 per urgent course of treatment. Of this £75 payment, £15 per patient will be paid automatically to practices to help cover the cost of keeping urgent appointment capacity available, and the remaining £60 will be paid once the course of treatment has been completed.
This change reflects long-standing feedback that urgent care is often more complex and time-consuming than the existing payment model recognises. However, if the goal is to sustainably improve oral health across the UK, stronger support for routine access to dental care will be essential to reduce demand for urgent and unscheduled treatment in the long run.
Minimum urgent care requirements
Alongside higher payments, practices holding an NHS contract will be required to deliver a minimum level of urgent and unscheduled care, set at 8.2% of contract value (around 11 urgent courses of treatment per £10,000). Commissioners will have limited discretion to adjust requirements where there is clear evidence that local demand for urgent care is insufficient.
Mandating activity in a demand-led area of care risks practices facing financial penalties for failing to hit urgent care targets when local need does not align with national assumptions. While the Government has acknowledged the need for some commissioner discretion, the approach remains prescriptive, and its success will depend on how flexibly these requirements are applied in practice. Denplan will continue to advocate for a flexible approach to commissioning across the board, so these requirements reflect local need and support practice sustainability.
New complex care pathways
Three new complex care pathways will also be introduced to better support adult patients with advanced decay or periodontal disease, allowing activity to be credited over time, rather than across multiple short courses of treatment.
While we welcome the principle of better recognising complexity, these proposed payments do not fully reflect the cost of delivering this care, including the additional time, follow-up, behavioural support and administrative burden involved. Although these concerns were acknowledged in the Government response, funding levels were not increased.
Our reflections
We welcome the progress reflected in these reforms. However, our experience tells us these measures alone will not resolve the wider challenges facing the dental sector. Our ongoing policy work, informed by the priorities set out in our Future of Dentistry white paper, will continue to focus on supporting and empowering the entire dental workforce, strengthening preventive care, and securing funding and commissioning models that are financially sustainable.
At Denplan, we are committed to continuing to work with government to ensure that the experiences of our members are reflected in future contract changes, and that reforms recognise the realities of delivering dental care in 2026, supporting practices to remain viable while meeting patient need.