England will have 665,000 more over-85s and 904,000 fewer children by 2034: what it means for dental practices
More than a third of England's population growth over the last decade was people over 65. Over the next decade ONS projects it at more than four fifths. We measured who is arriving around dental practices, for every council area in England and across 56 towns, set the homes on brownfield registers against the practices already there, and turned it into what to offer and plan for.
From 23 June 2026, NHS England's contract reforms introduced three Complex Care Pathways for patients aged 16 and over with significant decay and/or unstable or more severe periodontitis. The reforms arrive as the patient list ages. ONS projects England will have 665,000 more people aged 85 and over by 2034, and 904,000 fewer children. And more older people than ever are keeping their own teeth, which then need looking after for longer.
Key findings
- England is projected to have 665,000 more people aged 85 and over in 2034 than in 2024, up 45.1%, and 904,000 fewer children, down 7.6% (ONS 2022-based projections).
- People aged 65 and over make up 83.6% of England's projected population growth over the decade, against 35.7% over the last one.
- Children are projected to fall in 277 of 307 council areas. Over-75s are projected to grow in all 307.
- In 55 of the 56 towns we measure, the number of people aged 75 and over grew between 2014 and 2024. The median town gained 18.7% more over-75s and 7.3% more children.
- Council areas that gained the most over-75s for their size in the last decade are largely the ones projected to gain most in the next. 42 of the top 58 stay in the top fifth.
- Brownfield registers list a median 78 homes for every dental practice address in our towns. The registers are incomplete, and 44 of the 56 towns rely on at least one that is two or more years old.
Two terms used throughout. A council area is a local authority district, the level ONS publishes its population figures at. A town is one of the 56 English towns Practice Radar measures: every neighbourhood whose population centre lies within 2 to 5 miles of the town's centre.
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1. The next decade belongs to the over-85s
ONS projects that England will have 2.14 million people aged 85 and over by mid-2034, up from 1.48 million in 2024. That is 665,000 more, a rise of 45.1%. Over the same ten years it projects 904,000 fewer people under 18.
For every 1,000 people living in England today, that is 17.7 more over-75s, 11.4 more over-85s and 15.4 fewer children. The whole population grows by 2.73 million. People over 65 account for 2.28 million of it.
The next decade: 665,000 more people over 85, 904,000 fewer children
This is a turn, not a continuation. Between 2014 and 2024 England's over-75s grew by 25.7% and its children by 4.2%. Children were still growing. The latest estimates show the turn has started: between mid-2024 and mid-2025 the number of children in England fell by 67,000, while the number aged 65 and over rose by 216,000.
2. Why ageing changes the work, not just the numbers
The older patient of 2034 is not the older patient of 1990. In 1968, 37% of adults in England and Wales had no natural teeth at all. By 2009 it was 6% in England. That is from the Adult Dental Health Survey 2009, the national examination survey published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre in 2011.
The same survey found that tooth loss still climbs steeply with age: 15% of people aged 65 to 74 had no teeth, 30% of those aged 75 to 84 and 47% of those over 85. But for the first time, it said, the majority of adults in every age group, even over 85, still had some of their own teeth. Its authors drew the conclusion for dentistry directly: that has "service implications related to the continuing maintenance of natural teeth in these age groups."
The next cohort is better placed still. Among people aged 45 to 54 in 2009 who still had teeth, 92% had 21 or more natural teeth, up from 51% in 1978. Those people are in their sixties and early seventies now. Gums are the catch. Only 17% of adults with teeth had very healthy gums, meaning no bleeding, no hardened deposits and no pockets of 4mm or more, and among those over 55 it was 10% or less.
Put plainly: more old people, keeping more of their own teeth for longer, with gums that need looking after. That is likely to mean more maintenance, more restorative work, more periodontal care and more partial dentures, fewer simple full-denture cases, and longer, more complex appointments. The survey is from 2009, so treat the direction as firm and the exact percentages as dated.
"Most of us plan next year's book on who came through the door last year. The patients arriving over the next ten years are older, they've kept their teeth, and their gums need work. That's hygiene time and longer appointments, not more six-monthly check-ups," said Jack Henty, co-owner of Bollington Dental Practice and founder of Practice Radar.
Search interest points the same way, though not because of age alone. Over five years of UK search data, interest in dentures rose 33% and in a dental hygienist 38%, alongside rises for most treatments.
3. The bulge you can see coming
The shape of the last ten years explains the next ten. Between 2014 and 2024 England's population aged 75 to 79 grew by 37.2%, as the post-war births of the late 1940s crossed 75. Those people turn 85 over the coming decade, which is why the over-85s grow fastest next.
Behind them sits a second, bigger wave. The 55 to 59 band grew by 21.8% and the 60 to 64 band by 23.2%. These are the 1960s births, partly the same generation the 2009 survey found keeping its teeth. By 2034 they are 65 to 74, and ONS projects that age group grows by 22.5%, 1.24 million more people.
At the other end, the number of children under five fell by 10.2%. The children's list of 2034 is being born now, and it is smaller.
England, change by age over the last ten years
4. Where it happens fastest: council by council
Every council area ages. The difference is how fast, and it is large. We ranked the 307 council areas ONS projects for (leaving out the City of London and the Isles of Scilly, which are too small) by how many extra people aged 75 and over each gains per 1,000 of its residents today. That is fairer than a percentage, which flatters places that start with very few older people.
The median council area gains 18.8 over-75s per 1,000 residents. Fylde, on the Lancashire coast, gains 40.0. Barking and Dagenham gains 4.3. The leaders are rural and coastal areas: West Devon, Craven, Northumberland, Hambleton, Stratford-on-Avon, East Hampshire, East Devon, the Cotswolds and Dorset.
| Council area | Extra aged 75+ per 1,000 | Extra aged 85+ per 1,000 | Change in under-18s per 1,000 | Growth in 75+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fylde | +40.0 | +20.6 | −15.2 | +26.9% |
| West Devon | +39.6 | +26.4 | −17.4 | +26.1% |
| Craven (now North Yorkshire) | +38.0 | +23.7 | −14.6 | +25.9% |
| Northumberland | +37.4 | +19.3 | −16.6 | +29.0% |
| Hambleton (now North Yorkshire) | +36.6 | +21.3 | −11.6 | +25.2% |
| Stratford-on-Avon | +36.6 | +24.5 | +12.5 | +26.8% |
| East Hampshire | +36.5 | +24.8 | −4.3 | +28.4% |
| East Devon | +36.3 | +25.1 | −1.0 | +22.0% |
| Cotswold | +36.1 | +22.5 | −9.2 | +25.8% |
| Dorset | +36.0 | +24.5 | −19.2 | +22.1% |
| England | +17.7 | +11.4 | −15.4 | +19.0% |
Craven and Hambleton became part of North Yorkshire Council in April 2023. ONS published these projections on the council boundaries of 2021, so we show them under their former names. Every one of the 309 council areas is in the free download, so you can find your own.
In 143 of the 307 council areas, the over-65s are projected to grow by more than the whole population does. In those places everyone under 65 added together shrinks. Children are projected to fall in 277 council areas and grow in 30, led by North West Leicestershire, Stratford-on-Avon, South Derbyshire, Harborough and Central Bedfordshire.
The places that aged most will keep ageing most. Measured per 1,000 residents, the council areas that gained the most over-75s between 2014 and 2024 are largely the ones projected to gain most by 2034. Of the 58 top-fifth council areas over the last decade, 42 are in the top fifth again. Only the percentage league table reshuffles: by percentage, Maldon, Hart, South Derbyshire, Harborough and Lichfield each added more than 50% to their over-75s over the last decade, and that ranking says little about the next. Use the per 1,000 figure when you plan.
5. What we see in 56 towns
ONS figures for a whole council area can hide the town a practice actually serves. So we added up the small-area estimates for each of the 56 towns Practice Radar measures: 5,230 neighbourhoods, each around 1,500 people, inside a radius of 2 to 5 miles.
Between 2014 and 2024 the number of people aged 75 and over grew in 55 of the 56 towns. It grew faster than the number of children in 48, and faster than the whole population in 53. The median town gained 18.7% more over-75s, 15.0% more over-85s and 7.3% more children.
The fastest were not cities. Kirkham, in Fylde, added 51.5% to its over-75s, Congleton 46.4%, Northwich 45.1% and Lymm 41.3%. The only town where over-75s did not grow was Liverpool city centre, down 0.2%, where the working-age population grew 32.8%.
In the twelve fastest-ageing towns, over-75s grew at least twice as fast as children
Two patterns run through the 56. Smaller towns aged faster than big ones, and less deprived towns aged faster than more deprived ones. Both are clear but not absolute. We measured them with a rank correlation, which lines the towns up in order on two measures and scores how closely the orders match, from 1 (the same order) through 0 (no link) to −1 (the reverse order). Town size against over-75 growth scores −0.58. The deprivation score, where 10 is least deprived, scores 0.53. The places ageing fastest are the smaller, better-off market towns and suburbs.
These 56 are the towns Practice Radar measures, not a sample of England. Thirty of them are in the North West. Read them as 56 real local markets, and read the council figures above for the national picture.
6. The new homes, per practice
Ageing is who is already here. New homes bring people who are not. Every council must publish a register of previously developed land it judges suitable for housing, and most publish it to the national Planning Data platform. We counted the homes on those registers inside each town's radius, and set them against the number of dental practice addresses in the same radius, from the NHS's own register of organisations.
The median town has 13 homes on brownfield registers for every 1,000 residents and 78 for every dental practice address. Northwich has 3,964 homes against 10 practice addresses, 396 per address, and every register covering it is current. Chorlton's radius reaches Salford Quays and the edge of Manchester city centre, which is why it tops the table at 583. We only show homes per address where there are at least five addresses, so Kirkham, Congleton and Buxton are left out of this measure.
| Town | Homes on brownfield registers | Dental practice addresses | Homes per address | Registers two or more years old |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chorlton | 25,085 | 43 | 583 | 1 |
| Northwich | 3,964 | 10 | 396 | none |
| Norwich | 7,343 | 31 | 237 | 3 |
| Maidstone | 4,801 | 22 | 218 | 2 |
| Oxford | 5,665 | 28 | 202 | 2 |
| Prestwich | 6,455 | 33 | 196 | 3 |
| Worcester | 2,907 | 15 | 194 | none |
| Middlesbrough | 3,687 | 21 | 176 | 3 |
| Battersea | 38,428 | 222 | 173 | 4 |
| Peterborough | 3,760 | 26 | 145 | 2 |
Registers two or more years old, by town: Chorlton (Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council). Norwich (Broadland District Council, Norwich City Council, South Norfolk District Council). Maidstone (Maidstone Borough Council, Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council). Oxford (South Oxfordshire District Council, Vale of White Horse District Council). Prestwich (Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council, Bury Metropolitan Borough Council, Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council). Middlesbrough (Hartlepool Borough Council, Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council). Battersea (London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London Borough of Southwark, City of Westminster). Peterborough (Peterborough City Council, Fenland District Council).
Treat these counts as incomplete, in both directions. Brownfield registers leave out greenfield sites, which is where many large estates are built. Some registers are years old. And they can still list sites that are already wholly or partly built. Bolton's register on the national platform was last updated in December 2017, Peterborough's in December 2017, Maidstone's in June 2019, Trafford's in October 2019 and Stockport's in December 2020. In 44 of the 56 towns, at least one register covering the radius is two or more years old. Bath and Warrington show no homes at all, because their registers list 28 and 126 sites without saying how many homes each would hold. Inside the Bolton radius, 118 sites are listed the same way.
Across all 56 towns we found no clear link between house building and ageing. Among the 12 towns where every register is current there was a modest one (rank correlation 0.38), so with most registers out of date, check both for your own town.
"The people moving into those homes don't have a dentist yet. If you've got room for them, make sure they can find you before they start looking," said Jack Henty.
7. What to do about it
Start by finding your own council area in the download and your town in the table below. Then, depending on what you find:
If your area is ageing fast. Make the practice easy to reach for someone of 85: a step-free way in, a ground floor surgery, parking or a drop-off point close to the door. Say so plainly on your website and your Google profile, so that a patient, or a relative booking for them, can see it before they call. Decide whether you will offer home visits or work with local care homes, and if you do, put it on a page of its own. Give dentures, implant-retained dentures, gum disease and the hygienist their own pages that answer an older patient's real questions: cost, number of visits, what happens if they already wear a partial denture. Book for longer appointments and more hygiene time than your current list suggests.
If your area is building fast. New residents arrive without a dentist. Be findable before they arrive: a complete Google Business Profile, an accurate NHS website entry that says whether you are taking patients, and a page aimed at people new to the area. If you have capacity, say so.
If your children's list is your growth plan. Check the projection first. Children are projected to fall in 277 of 307 council areas. In most of England, a practice that grows its list over the next decade will grow it with adults, and increasingly older ones.
Plan on extra people per 1,000, not on percentages. A council area's past gain in over-75s per 1,000 residents is a good guide to its next decade. A headline percentage is not.
8. All 56 towns
Fastest-ageing first. "Homes per dental address" divides homes on brownfield registers by the dental practice addresses in the same radius, shown only where there are five or more addresses. A town marked * relies on at least one register two or more years old.
| Town | Aged 75+ | Aged 85+ | Under 18 | Share aged 65+, 2024 | Brownfield homes | Homes per dental address |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kirkham | +51.5% | +29.4% | +15.7% | 23.5% | 446 * | n/a |
| Congleton | +46.4% | +30.8% | +13.6% | 25.0% | 54 | n/a |
| Northwich | +45.1% | +21.6% | +7.1% | 21.2% | 3,964 | 396 |
| Lymm | +41.3% | +41.9% | +0.5% | 21.5% | 478 * | 37 |
| Macclesfield | +33.5% | +17.1% | +1.9% | 24.4% | 1,003 * | 40 |
| Maidstone | +32.8% | +30.2% | +16.2% | 18.4% | 4,801 * | 218 |
| Sleaford | +32.7% | +28.4% | +1.7% | 22.9% | 217 | 36 |
| Warrington | +32.5% | +30.8% | +2.4% | 18.7% | 0 * | 0 |
| Bury St Edmunds | +32.1% | +19.9% | +2.7% | 23.4% | 716 * | 102 |
| Worcester | +31.7% | +24.8% | +3.3% | 18.4% | 2,907 | 194 |
| Hedge End | +30.5% | +32.3% | +8.1% | 18.8% | 423 * | 30 |
| Lewes | +30.1% | +15.1% | −14.2% | 25.2% | 1,048 | 116 |
| Marple | +29.7% | +28.8% | +3.3% | 24.8% | 700 * | 41 |
| Salisbury | +28.2% | +19.4% | +12.8% | 22.0% | 1,382 * | 77 |
| Buxton | +25.9% | +24.9% | −5.9% | 22.5% | 138 * | n/a |
| Hounslow | +25.0% | +19.8% | +7.3% | 13.5% | 9,341 * | 93 |
| Bramhall | +23.9% | +24.3% | +6.3% | 21.8% | 1,390 * | 56 |
| St Helens | +23.7% | +26.7% | +2.5% | 19.9% | 81 * | 5 |
| Knutsford | +22.8% | +21.5% | +7.6% | 25.7% | 18 | 3 |
| Plymouth | +22.6% | +15.3% | +1.8% | 18.6% | 5,082 * | 130 |
| Swindon | +22.4% | +22.0% | +9.7% | 17.5% | 3,346 * | 129 |
| Esher | +22.1% | +15.1% | +3.7% | 18.0% | 1,658 * | 46 |
| Chester | +22.0% | +15.5% | +6.4% | 19.4% | 1,337 | 67 |
| Wilmslow | +20.8% | +24.5% | +11.0% | 22.0% | 2,546 * | 121 |
| Bolton | +20.7% | +10.7% | +16.9% | 15.7% | 33 * | 1 |
| Barnet | +20.1% | +13.1% | +5.5% | 17.7% | 4,115 * | 64 |
| Ashton-under-Lyne | +19.6% | +5.2% | +9.4% | 15.9% | 3,456 | 115 |
| Peterborough | +18.9% | +15.5% | +21.9% | 14.0% | 3,760 * | 145 |
| Denton | +18.5% | +9.3% | +9.6% | 16.4% | 4,037 * | 130 |
| Oldham | +17.9% | +7.5% | +10.2% | 14.7% | 4,872 * | 143 |
| Oxford | +16.7% | +10.1% | +5.2% | 13.3% | 5,665 * | 202 |
| Battersea | +16.6% | +11.0% | −7.1% | 10.8% | 38,428 * | 173 |
| Ipswich | +16.5% | +10.8% | +3.6% | 18.4% | 2,925 | 112 |
| Stockport | +16.5% | +11.5% | +5.2% | 16.6% | 3,230 * | 81 |
| Blackpool | +15.7% | +5.9% | +2.8% | 23.0% | 741 * | 41 |
| Altrincham | +14.8% | +8.1% | +8.6% | 18.4% | 458 * | 15 |
| Eccles | +14.4% | +7.0% | +9.5% | 16.2% | 2,025 * | 81 |
| Hull | +14.0% | +20.0% | +10.2% | 17.9% | 3,495 * | 81 |
| Blackburn | +13.8% | +6.6% | +7.7% | 14.7% | 697 * | 41 |
| Woolton | +13.6% | +19.7% | +8.4% | 21.2% | 715 | 31 |
| Newcastle upon Tyne | +13.0% | +18.4% | +10.7% | 17.8% | 4,043 * | 144 |
| Norwich | +12.9% | +4.4% | +6.6% | 17.3% | 7,343 * | 237 |
| Bromley | +12.2% | +7.4% | +0.8% | 17.1% | 3,658 * | 61 |
| Urmston | +11.8% | +8.5% | +7.2% | 17.0% | 1,198 * | 60 |
| Didsbury | +11.4% | +8.0% | +5.6% | 13.1% | 2,576 * | 63 |
| Crosby | +10.9% | +4.4% | +2.8% | 21.2% | 342 | 26 |
| Prestwich | +10.9% | +2.3% | +14.5% | 13.9% | 6,455 * | 196 |
| Bath | +10.8% | −2.5% | +1.8% | 17.2% | 0 * | 0 |
| Beeston, Nottingham | +10.1% | +8.9% | +6.0% | 15.2% | 3,263 * | 80 |
| Sale & Timperley | +10.1% | +4.9% | +7.7% | 16.6% | 1,034 * | 22 |
| Allerton | +9.6% | +11.1% | +9.8% | 17.0% | 164 | 5 |
| Wolverhampton | +9.6% | +13.3% | +18.4% | 15.7% | 5,206 * | 124 |
| Middlesbrough | +9.5% | +14.9% | +9.8% | 17.3% | 3,687 * | 176 |
| Bournemouth | +8.5% | −6.6% | +8.6% | 18.7% | 3,515 * | 78 |
| Chorlton | +0.9% | +5.4% | +8.8% | 9.5% | 25,085 * | 583 |
| Liverpool Centre | −0.2% | −9.3% | +20.0% | 9.1% | 1,145 * | 60 |
Some towns share ground: the Liverpool, south Manchester and south-west London radii overlap, so the same neighbourhoods and the same brownfield sites can count in more than one. Each row is right for its own town. Do not add rows together.
How we did this
National past. ONS mid-year population estimates for local authorities by single year of age (Nomis dataset NM_2002_1), for England and its 296 council areas on April 2023 boundaries, mid-2014, mid-2024 and mid-2025. Children are 0 to 17, working age 18 to 64. The City of London and the Isles of Scilly (both under 20,000 people) are left out of rankings. ONS revised the estimates for 2012 to 2020 after Census 2021, so the 2014 figures are revised back estimates and some of the change we report is revision rather than people moving or ageing. The mid-2025 estimates were used only to check the direction, not in any comparison.
National future. ONS subnational population projections for England, 2022-based (Nomis dataset NM_2006_1), projected mid-2024 and mid-2034, for 309 council areas on April 2021 boundaries. Projections assume recent trends in births, deaths and migration continue. They are not forecasts, and ONS says so. We compare the projection's 2024 with its own 2034, never with the estimates, so the two series are not mixed. The past-against-future comparison uses the 290 council areas whose codes are the same on both boundary sets. Per 1,000 figures divide each change by the population at the start of its period.
Towns. For each of the 56 towns, every 2021 neighbourhood (Lower layer Super Output Area) whose population weighted centroid, from the ONS Open Geography Portal, lies inside the town's radius. Populations are ONS small area estimates, 2021 based (Nomis NM_2014_1), mid-2014 and mid-2024. The 2014 figures are ONS back estimates on 2021 boundaries, which carry more uncertainty at this small scale than the council figures do. Deprivation is the English Indices of Deprivation 2025, population weighted. Two towns are labelled for the place at the centre of their radius, Esher and Beeston in Nottingham, rather than the name used inside Practice Radar.
Homes. Brownfield land registers from the Planning Data platform, sites inside the radius, current and not marked complete, each site counted once, using the minimum number of homes the council gives. Sites with no figure count as zero. A register "two or more years old" is one whose newest entry on the platform is before 24 September 2024.
Dental practice addresses. Every organisation with the primary role "general dental practice" marked active in the NHS Organisation Data Service, read through its Organisation Reference Data API on 24 September 2026: 9,796 codes at 9,121 distinct postcodes, 9,088 of which postcodes.io could place. We count postcodes, not codes, because one practice often holds several. The register is the NHS's, so a practice with no NHS link may be missing and a closed one may still be listed. As a check, the count agreed reasonably with the practices Practice Radar tracks in each town (rank correlation 0.6). Homes per address is shown only where a radius holds five or more addresses.
Controls. We checked whether town ageing was just a function of town size, deprivation or house building, whether the past decade predicted the projection (per 1,000 residents it did, rank correlation 0.81, by percentage it did not, 0.33), and whether our town totals matched our own published area figures exactly (they did, to the person). No individual practice is named or measured in this article.
Clinical and policy sources. Clinical figures come only from the Adult Dental Health Survey 2009, Theme 1: Oral health and function (Health and Social Care Information Centre, 2011), covering England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Complex Care Pathways are described in NHS England's NHS dentistry: quality and payment reforms contractual guidance (published 26 March 2026, updated 29 July 2026). Search interest is from Practice Radar's UK dental search market study: Google Trends relative search interest over 262 complete weeks from September 2021, which measures interest as a share of all searching, not a count of searches.
For editors
The data in this article is free to reuse with attribution to Practice Radar, under Creative Commons BY 4.0. Sources: ONS population estimates (mid-2014 to mid-2025) and 2022-based projections (mid-2024 to mid-2034), MHCLG brownfield land registers, the NHS Organisation Data Service, and the Adult Dental Health Survey 2009. The council-area data has all 309 council areas, with a column glossary, so a regional figure can be pulled for any patch. Contact: hello@practiceradar.co.uk.
Practice Radar measures local dental markets for practice owners, and compiled this study from official data.
Questions we get asked about this data
How much will the over-85 population grow in England?
ONS's 2022-based projections put England's population aged 85 and over at 2.14 million in mid-2034, up from 1.48 million in mid-2024. That is 665,000 more people, a rise of 45.1%.
Are there fewer children needing a dentist?
Nationally, yes, from here. ONS projects 904,000 fewer under-18s in England by 2034, a fall of 7.6%, with children falling in 277 of 307 council areas. Between 2014 and 2024 the number of children still rose by 4.2%, so a practice's recent experience will not show it yet.
Which parts of England will have the most extra older patients?
Measured per 1,000 residents, rural and coastal council areas. Fylde gains 40.0 over-75s per 1,000 residents by 2034, West Devon 39.6 and Craven 38.0, against 17.7 for England as a whole.
See who is arriving around your practice
Practice Radar reads your town for you: who lives within your radius and how that is changing, the homes planned nearby, and the practices competing for the same patients, so you can decide what to offer before the demand arrives.
Run on our own practice first: ninth in its town's searches in May, first in September. Page-one keywords: 6 in May, 194 now.
Thirty days free. No card, and nothing starts automatically when it ends.