Dental commissioning and policy

About us

NHS England’s role in dental commissioning is to ultimately achieve excellence and consistency in the commissioning of dental specialties in England to reduce inequalities, improve care for patients to ensure they are receiving the highest quality dental care in the most appropriate setting, delivered by professionals with the required skill set, resulting in improved health outcomes for patients, and ensuring value for money for the taxpayer.

The Primary Care Commissioning team leads on the support of NHS England’s direct commissioning responsibilities for primary dental and secondary dental care, for the population of England. We do this through leading operational policies and working directly with local commissioning teams and the wider dental community.

The National Dental Commissioning and Policy team are responsible for supporting managers and staff across NHS England to develop and improve the contractual framework for commissioning of primary dental services, and to undertake related national projects to improve the quality and responsiveness of services.

Our current priorities of work include:

  • To reduce oral health inequalities and improve oral health in children under the age of 5;
  • Flexible commissioning;
  • To oversee national dental access and address area of weakest dental provision;
  • To ensure a consistent and fair approach to contract performance management is applied nationally to dental contracts;
  • Dental contract reform.

Further information

If you would like to get in contact with the team then email: england.dentaloptoms@nhs.net. This email address should only be used by NHS colleagues and contractors. Members of the public, patients, and their representatives should contact our Customer Contact Centre: england.contactus@nhs.net.