No successor to the 2006 UDA dental contract, only modifications

The December 2025 government response confirmed quality and payment reforms implemented from April and June 2026: urgent-care sessions paid at £60 per course of treatment, child fluoride varnish, complex-care pathways and a £3,400 quality-improvement payment, all layered onto the Unit of Dental Activity model. The BDA confirms the UDA survives. No white paper, legislation or dated programme exists for wholesale contract replacement or patient registration.

The activity-unit model is the acknowledged driver of dentists leaving NHS work and of access deserts, condemned by select committees since 2008. Incremental patches risk relieving just enough pressure to defer fundamental reform indefinitely.

A formal dental contract reform programme with a dated milestone in this Parliament: a piloted weighted-capitation-plus-registration contract, a legislated successor to the 2006 framework, and an accompanying dental workforce plan. DHSC owns it, with the BDA and the integrated care boards as necessary partners.

// State-led: Instrument: legislated successor to the 2006 UDA contract with dated milestones; a DHSC-owned reform programme.

The discredited fee model drives dentists from the NHS, and government layers incremental patches with no dated wholesale-reform milestone.