Dental Services for Northern Ireland, Quarterly Series to Q1 2026/27 - Provisional

Dental Services for Northern Ireland, Quarterly Series to Q1 2026/27 - Provisional

Published 30 July 2026

An Accredited Official Statistics Publication
Published by: BSO Family Practitioner Services Information Unit

Contact: Jennifer McCrea
Telephone: 028 9536 3691
Email: Jennifer.McCrea@hscni.net

Theme: General Dental Services
Coverage: Northern Ireland
Frequency: Quarterly

Publication date: 30 July 2026

Key Facts

Key variable	This quarter	Change since last quarter (%)	Change since last year (%)
Patient Registrations	933,427	-1.3	-3.4
Dentist Headcount	1,174	-0.5	-1.5
Dental Practices	349	-0.6	-2.2
Fillings	124,373	0.1	-8.0
Extractions	27,474	1.6	-10.4
X-Rays	135,232	1.1	-6.0
Crowns	3,074	6.2	-15.5
Treatment Claims	235,379	2.6	-3.8
IOS Treatment Fees Paid (£’s)	16,691,000	4.8	-2.5

Quarterly Series Tables

Download the quarterly general dental statistics by clicking on the button below. This quarterly series is a subset of the annual information with data provided for selected key tables relating to the following topics:

• Patient Registrations by Gender and Age Group
• Patient Registrations by Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust), Local Government District and Assembly Area
• Fillings, Extractions, X-Rays and Crowns by Gender and Age Group
• Fillings, Extractions, X-Rays and Crowns by Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust) and Local Government District
• Monthly Breakdown of Claims submitted and paid, IoS Fees Paid and Number of Patients treated by Payment Month
• Number of Dental Practices by Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust), Local Government District and Assembly Area
• Headcount of Dentists by Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust), Local Government District and Assembly Area

The quarterly updates within a year should be treated as provisional and may be revised when figures are finalised to produce the end of year annual report.

Download data:

Quarterly data: 188KB

Statement of Dental Remuneration (SDR)

Download the latest SDR statistics for children and adults by clicking on the respective buttons below.

The SDR children and adult tables detail information on the number of claims, patients and treatment items by their individual item of service codes. Children are those under 18 at the start of the treatment, while adults are those 18 and over. This covers the period 2015/16 to Q1 2026/27.

Download data:

SDR Children: 147KB

SDR Adults: 160KB

Trend Charts

1.1 Patient Registrations in Northern Ireland

Figure 1.1a: Number of Patient Registrations by gender and financial quarter

Download data:

Figure 1.1a.CSV (1kB)

Figure 1.1a.XLSX (9kB)

Figure 1.1b: Number of Patient Registrations by age and financial quarter

Download data:

Figure 1.1b.CSV (2kB)

Figure 1.1b.XLSX (10kB)

1.2 Treatments in Northern Ireland

Figure 1.2: Number of Fillings, Extractions, X-Rays and Crown Treatments by financial quarter

Download data:

Figure 1.2.CSV (1kB)

Figure 1.2.XLSX (9kB)

1.3 Dentists in Northern Ireland

Figure 1.3: Headcount of Dentists by financial quarter

Download data:

Figure 1.3.CSV (1kB)

Figure 1.3.XLSX (8kB)

1.4 Treatment Claims submitted and paid and IOS Treatment Fees Paid

Figure 1.4: Monthly Breakdown of Treatment Claims submitted and paid and IOS Treatment Fees Paid by Payment Month

Download data:

Figure 1.4.CSV (2kB)

Figure 1.4.XLSX (10kB)

User Guidance

Dentists are paid a monthly fee for each registered patient. The registration payments are based on the patient’s age, and can be weighted by home address as a proxy measure for deprivation which is closely associated with oral health need; and additionally whether or not they have certain special needs to remunerate for the additional time to provide care and treatment:

• Children (Capitation) Registration fee – a basic monthly fee for the care and treatment, necessary to secure and maintain oral health, of patients under the age of 18.

• Adult (Continuing Care) Registration fee – Is a monthly fee payable for patients aged 18 years or over, and as such is more akin to a fee for maintaining a patient’s registration.

Dentists must be registered on the Dental List to carry out health service treatment but may also do private work, however FPS have no record of the proportion of private vs health service work or private patients or treatments. Dentists can move around different practices to work, there are no restrictions on staying in one practice and many work in multiple locations at the same time. For the purposes of this release, dentists have been assigned to an area based on the amount of money they earn in each area they work.

Dental Practices can have different numbers of dentists working and can do differing proportions of health service work.

The Statement of Dental Remuneration (SDR) lists all the items of service (i.e. individual care, special investigations, and treatments) that dentists can provide and claim payment for. Payments are made for individual treatments provided within a course of treatment. To help maintain access for patients and to further support practitioners, Item of Service fees as detailed in the Statement of Dental Remuneration (SDR) for extractions, fillings and root canal treatment were enhanced by 30% for 2024/25. This 30% enhancement continues to be applied in 2025/26.

Treatment claims, which are a subset of all claims are defined as having at least one Statement of Dental Remuneration (SDR) Item of Service (IoS) being claimed by the dentist, and can cover a single appointment or multiple appointments. Quarterly counts of treatment claims are the sum of the unique treatments for each month in the relevant quarter.

Many people qualify for a free dental treatment including those in receipt of certain adult income-related passport benefits (Dental Charges & Fees - Business Services Organisation (BSO) Website). Entitlement for free dental treatment can change over time, an example of this, is the introduction from 1st December 2025 of those in receipt of Universal Credit (subject to earnings threshold) now being eligible to free dental treatment. Prior to that, those in receipt of Universal Credit were only eligible in conjunction with a valid HC2 certificate which is provided through the NHS Low Income Scheme. Readers should therefore be mindful of the potential impact such changes in eligibility criteria can have on quarterly figures and with respect to longer term trends.

Total Payment made in relation to IoS Treatments = Children (Capitation) IoS Fees + Adult (Continuing Care) IoS Fees + FSS/RSS (including Trainee Block Payment) + PPE. During the Covid-19 pandemic, dentists were provided FSS/RSS payments to supplement their IoS related income. In addition PPE payments were provided so that dental services could resume while meeting the health and safety requirements set out by the former HSCB.

For more detail consult the user guidance tab on the downloadable quarterly series tables.

About this publication

The General Dental Services Statistics for Northern Ireland 2019/20 to 2025/26 annual reports contain high-level information on Primary Care services in Northern Ireland with comparisons against previous years. Annual data is supplemented by annex tables providing more detailed information with year-on-year comparisons. The Annual reports and accompanying tables are available here.

This quarterly series is a subset of the annual information, with data provided for certain key tables. Not all tables presented in the annual report have been replicated quarterly, as in many cases there is not much change in the figures from quarter to quarter. For example, certain analysis such as proximity to services, do not change much on a quarterly basis. This publication is in a new HTML format, as was introduced for the Q3 2023/24 quarterly series, and includes interactive graphics and the ability to automatically download the data presented in the charts.

This is an Accredited Official Statistics Publication.

Accredited official statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 – see here for further explanation of this terminology. These official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) in May 2022. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘accredited official statistics’.

We have developed a series of statements to demonstrate how we meet the Code in our everyday work. These cover our independence, data quality procedures, how we make our statistics accessible whilst protecting your data, engage with you to meet your needs and, when things go wrong, how we make corrections or, should our services fall below the required standard, how you can make a complaint. All of this information is included in our Statistics Charter.

Since the assessment by the OSR, we have continued to comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics, and have made the following improvements this year:

• Annual Family Practitioner Services (FPS) General Dental Statistics publication excel Table 1.09: Percentage of population registered by gender, age and Financial Year now includes an All Persons breakdown.
• Quarterly Family Practitioner Services (FPS) General Dental Statistics publication now includes Registrations by Assembly Area in the excel output - Table 1.4.

Our statistical practice is regulated by the OSR. They set the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to. You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards (contact the responsible statistician listed at beginning of this publication). Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website here.

Data Quality Summary

The data has been primarily sourced from the Family Practitioner Payment System (FPPS) in respect of FPS activity and payment information. Resident population data has been sourced from official NISRA demographic statistics.

The FPPS is a business critical payment system which is subject to periodic audit. The data quality is assessed as very good based on the low percentage of claims which have to be adjusted following payment.

As an administrative data system, there will inevitably be some manual entry errors and, even for automated processes, there may be errors within the claims submitted by primary care contractors.

The extensive validation that occurs prior to payments being made, coupled with the consistency and variance checks carried out during the compilation of this publication means that the data provides a good representation of FPS activity for the period covered by the report.

A background data quality report for this publication is available. Additional details are in the FPS Quality Assurance of Administrative Data report.

Feedback

Feedback is welcome and if you have requirements for further quarterly breakdowns please email BSO_PrimaryCare.Statistics@hscni.net

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