NHS Dental Statistics for England: Workforce Counts by Contract Type

NHS Digital provides annual counts of dentists who performed NHS activity in England. The data categorizes dentists by their contractual arrangements: General Dental Services (GDS), Personal Dental Services (PDS), and Trust-led Dental Services (TDS). The dataset was last updated on 2026-07-08 and is released under the OGL-UK-3.0 license.

Use Cases

• Analyze the distribution of dental workforce across different NHS contract types based on the described GDS, PDS, and TDS categories.
• Monitor trends in the number of dentists providing NHS services over time based on the annual collection nature.
• Assess the availability of specialist dental services based on the description that certain specialist work must be provided under PDS agreements.

Strengths

• Data is provided by NHS Digital, the national provider of health and social care statistics for England.
• The dataset distinguishes between three specific NHS dental contract types as described: GDS, PDS, and TDS.
• The record has a specific last updated timestamp: 2026-07-08 13:31:25.984931.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

NHS Digital

Collection Method

Administrative data collection on NHS dental activity.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:31:25.984931; freshness should be verified.

Geography

England