More than one in six people who tried for an NHS dental appointment did not get one, from one in ten to nearly four in ten by area

Most figures on NHS dentistry count treatment: how many people were seen, how much work was done. They cannot say how many people tried and got nowhere. One official source can. Every winter the GP Patient Survey, run by Ipsos for NHS England, is sent to a random sample of people aged 16 and over registered with a GP practice in England, and a short section of it asks about NHS dentistry. In 2026 it went to 2.97 million people and 654,714 replied. We call them adults below.

NHS England publishes the dental answers for England, for its seven regions and for each integrated care board (ICB), the NHS body that plans and pays for NHS dentistry in its area. There are 36 ICBs since April 2026. The survey does not publish dental answers for anything smaller. This study sets out each ICB's results with the survey's own margins of error, compares them with 2024 wherever the area is the same, and adds the people who did not try at all. There is a search box below that finds an ICB by its own name or by the name of a council or city in it, and the full table is free to download.

Three things are measured, all from people's own answers.

Did not get an appointment. People were asked when they last tried to get an NHS dental appointment for themselves. Those who had tried in the past two years were asked "Were you able to get an NHS dental appointment?" They could answer yes, or no with a reason, or that they could not remember. Our figure is the share who did not answer yes, leaving out the few who could not remember.

Experience. The same people were asked "Overall, how would you describe your experience of NHS dental services?", from very good to very poor.

Why people did not try. People who had not tried in the past two years were asked for their main reason.

1. More than one in six who tried did not get an appointment

Of the people in England who tried to get an NHS dental appointment in the past two years, 81.5% got one and 18.5% did not. The survey's 95% confidence interval for the share who did not is 18.3% to 18.7%, from 326,119 people. In 2025 it was 21.8% and in 2024 it was 23.7%, so it has fallen by 5.1 points in two years, far more than chance could explain.

The question let people tick more than one answer. 9% of people who tried and could remember said the dentist was not taking new patients, 7% said no appointments were available and 5% gave another reason. Those add up to more than 18.5% because some people ticked more than one.

Most attempts are to somewhere familiar: 84% of people who tried went to a practice they had been to before for NHS care. The 2026 files do not split the success rate between those people and people trying somewhere new. NHS England's own further analysis of the 2025 survey does. In 2025, 87% of people who tried a practice they had been to before got an appointment, against 38% of people who tried one they had not been to before.

2. Every integrated care board: from 10.2% to 38.3%

Every ICB in England is on the chart below, with the survey's estimate and its margin of error. Type the name of a council, a city or an ICB into the search box to read its figures.

People who tried to get an NHS dental appointment in the past two years and did not get one, by integrated care board, 2026

The highest estimate is for Devon, where 38.3% of people who tried did not get an NHS appointment, nearly four in ten. The lowest is for Coventry and Warwickshire, 10.2%, one in ten. 11 ICBs are higher than England by more than chance and 16 are lower. The other 9 cannot be told apart from England.

A survey gives an estimate, not a count, so the order of the table is not exact. The "rank could be anywhere from" column gives the highest and lowest place each ICB could hold without contradicting the margins of error, with 1 the highest share. Devon, Somerset and Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are higher than every other ICB by more than chance. Among those three the gaps are close to the margins of error, so their order should not be relied on. At the other end, Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent and Coventry and Warwickshire are lower than every other ICB and cannot be separated from each other. In the middle of the table, places a few rows apart mean little.

The differences between ICBs are far larger than the margins of error. If every ICB had the same true figure, the margins of error would produce about 1% of the spread we see. About half of the spread (52%) is between regions. The South West is the outlier: six of its seven ICBs are higher than England by more than chance, and the seventh, Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire, is level with England.

Read these as what people in each area reported. They are not a score for an ICB or for the dentists in it. People are counted where their GP practice is, the answers look back two years, and the seven ICBs that were merged or redrawn took their present shape only on 1 April 2026, in the last two weeks of the survey. Areas also differ in how many people replied. Response rates run from 14% to 34% across ICBs. The South West's, 31%, is the highest of any region and London's, 16%, the lowest. ICBs with higher response rates tend to report lower success (rank correlation minus 0.54, where 0 is no relationship and 1 or minus 1 is a perfect one). The survey's weights are there to correct for who replies, but that cannot be checked from outside, so part of the gap between areas may come from who answered.

3. Better than 2024 almost everywhere that can be compared

People who tried and did not get an NHS dental appointment, England and its NHS regions, 2024 to 2026

Every region is lower than in 2024. The South West has fallen from 34.6% to 27.9% and is still well above every other region.

The dentistry questions are the same in 2024, 2025 and 2026, so the three years can be compared. Two other things did change. The response rate fell from 27% in 2024 to 22% in 2026. And in 2026 the last mailing, which in earlier years carried a paper questionnaire, went by text or e-letter to half of the people under 70. The survey's published note on changes says tests found this did not affect comparisons between years. We also checked whether the ICBs whose response rate fell furthest improved the most. They did not (rank correlation 0.04 across the 29 unchanged ICBs).

Comparing ICBs takes more care, because the map changed. England's 42 ICBs became 36 in April 2026. 29 of today's ICBs cover exactly the area they did in 2024, and one more, West and North London, is two whole 2024 ICBs joined together, so its 2024 figure can be rebuilt. For those 30, the share who did not get an appointment fell by more than chance in 27. It did not rise by more than chance in any. The three with no clear change are Devon (36.6% in 2024, 38.3% in 2026), North East and North Cumbria (23.7% in 2024, 23.4% in 2026) and Coventry and Warwickshire (11.3% in 2024, 10.2% in 2026).

The largest falls are in Gloucestershire, from 35.2% to 21.1%, Somerset, from 46.7% to 34.8%, and Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire, from 29.4% to 18.9%.

The other six, Central East, Essex, Hampshire and Isle of Wight, Norfolk and Suffolk, Surrey and Sussex and Thames Valley, took in parts of ICBs that were split up, so nobody can say from the published survey what their 2024 figure would have been. The file leaves it blank.

4. The half who did not try

The headline figure is about people who tried. Half of adults did not: 50.3% had not tried to get an NHS dental appointment in the past two years, and 30.8% said they had never tried. Their main reasons, in 2026: 27% prefer to go to a private dentist, 26% did not think they could get an NHS dental appointment, 19% had not needed to visit a dentist, 5% said NHS dental care is too expensive, and 4% are on a waiting list for an NHS dentist.

Everyone asked about NHS dental appointments, 2024 and 2026

Putting everyone asked on one bar changes how the improvement reads. The share of all adults who tried and got an NHS appointment was 38.5% in 2024 and 38.8% in 2026. The share who tried and did not get one fell from 11.9% to 8.8%. Over the same two years the share who did not try, because they did not think they could get one, rose from 11.6% to 13.0%. So the success rate among people who tried has improved, while the share of all adults who got an NHS appointment has hardly changed. The survey cannot say whether the people who no longer try are the ones who would have been turned away.

This matters most in the places where the largest share of people report not getting an appointment. In Devon, 35% of the people who had not tried said it was because they did not think they could get an NHS appointment. In the Black Country it was 15%. Across the 36 ICBs, the two measures move together (rank correlation 0.64). Add the people who tried and failed to the people who did not try for that reason, and it comes to 35% of everyone asked in Devon, against 14% in Coventry and Warwickshire.

5. Nearly three in four people who tried rate NHS dental services as good

73.5% of people who tried to get an NHS dental appointment described their experience of NHS dental services as very or fairly good, up from 69.2% in 2024. 15.1% described it as fairly or very poor, down from 19.5%. Across ICBs the share saying good runs from 57.2% in Devon to 82.1% in Coventry and Warwickshire, and it follows the share who got an appointment almost exactly (rank correlation 0.97). 13 ICBs are lower than England by more than chance and 14 are higher.

What to do about it

If you report on or scrutinise an ICB, find it in the chart above or in the file. Quote the figure with its interval, and check the column that says whether it differs from England by more than chance before calling an area better or worse. Where the file gives a 2024 figure, the area is the same in both years. Where it is blank, the boundary changed and no fair comparison exists.

If you hold an NHS contract, 9% of people who tried to get an NHS appointment said the dentist was not taking new patients. People who are turned away may stop trying, and after two years the survey counts them among those who did not try. Keep your NHS website profile and your own website saying the same, current thing about whether you are taking new adult and child NHS patients, so people do not ring to find out. If the answer is no, say what you can offer.

If you are a private or mixed practice, some of the people this survey describes are looking for somewhere that will see them. In 2026 about 13% of all adults had not tried for an NHS appointment because they did not think they would get one. A page that says plainly you are taking new patients, what a first visit involves and what it costs at your practice, with a membership plan for those who want to spread the cost, answers what they are asking. Then check that the page is what people nearby find when they search.

If you are choosing where to open or buy, read this beside the NHS's own figures on how many adults are seen. In an ICB where many people try and fail, and many more do not try because they do not expect to get an appointment, demand is not what is missing.

How we did this

The survey. GP Patient Survey 2026, official statistics published by Ipsos on behalf of NHS England on 9 July 2026. Invitations went to 2.97 million people aged 16 and over who had been registered with a GP practice in England for at least six months, between 2 January and 13 April 2026, and 654,714 replied, a response rate of 22%. Results are weighted by Ipsos to match the population. We used the published weighted results for England, the seven NHS regions and the 36 integrated care systems, and the England and integrated care system results for 2025 and 2024. The survey was redesigned in 2024 and its publishers say results from before then cannot be compared, so 2024 is the earliest year we use. The dentistry questions, their answer options and the people they are put to are the same in all three years, which we checked against the survey's list of reporting variables for each year.

The lowest level published. The dental questions are in the national, region and integrated care system files. The files for primary care networks and for GP practices do not carry them.

Did not get an appointment. The survey publishes the share answering yes to "Were you able to get an NHS dental appointment?" among people who tried in the past two years and did not answer "I can't remember". Our figure is 100 minus that. The question allows more than one answer, and anyone who ticked yes counts as having got an appointment. In England 4% of people who tried could not remember. Counting them in, 21.6% did not say yes.

Areas. People are counted in the area of the GP practice they are registered with, not where their dentist is or exactly where they live. An integrated care system covers the same area as its integrated care board. ONS codes for the boards and regions are from the ONS April 2026 lookup.

Margins of error. We use the 95% confidence intervals the survey publishes. They allow for the weighting, which makes them about 1.3 times as wide as the simple formula for a random sample of the same size. Two areas, or an area and England, are called different only if their intervals do not overlap, which is a cautious test. A change between years is called larger than chance if it is more than 1.96 times the combined standard error of the two years, taking each standard error from the published interval. The smallest ICB sample is 2,461 people, in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, where the margin is 2.4 points either way. Where we pool areas, the interval is our own calculation and not the survey's. Pooling the 2026 ICBs into regions gives the published regional percentages but intervals that are too narrow, the published ones being up to 32% wider, so we widen every pooled interval by that much.

Comparing with 2024. A 2024 figure is given for an ICB only if it covers the same area in both years. We checked that with ONS's lookups of small areas to ICBs for 2025 and 2026: 29 ICBs are unchanged, West and North London is exactly North Central London and North West London joined together, and six took in part of an ICB that was split. For West and North London and for the regions, the 2024 areas are pooled on their weighted counts. Rebuilding the published 2026 regions and England from the 2026 ICBs the same way gives the published percentages.

Everyone asked. The shares of all adults in section 4 divide the survey's weighted counts for each answer by the weighted number who answered the question on when they last tried. NHS England does not publish these combinations, so they carry no interval.

Controls we ran. Chance: the margins of error account for about 1% of the spread between ICBs. Region: about 52% of the spread is between regions, so region is not the whole story. Counting people who could not remember does not reorder the ICBs (rank correlation 0.93 with the published measure). Against a separate source: ICBs where the NHS's own claims data shows a larger share of adults seen by an NHS dentist in two years tend to have a higher success rate in the survey (rank correlation 0.62 across the 29 unchanged ICBs in 2026, and 0.64 across all 42 in 2025). That is an association between two measures of the same areas. It does not show that one causes the other. The trend is steady: England improved in both years, and so did 25 of the 30 comparable ICBs. Who is asking matters: ICBs where more people tried a practice they had been to before have higher success rates (rank correlation 0.68), so some of the difference between areas may be how many people are looking for a new dentist. Response rates run from 14% to 34% across ICBs, and ICBs with higher response rates report lower success (rank correlation minus 0.54, or minus 0.33 outside the South West). The survey's weights are there to correct for who replies, but they cannot be checked from outside. Over time the response rate fell in every one of the 29 unchanged ICBs, and the size of that fall is unrelated to the size of the improvement (rank correlation 0.04).

What this is not. It is not a count of appointments, of dentists or of people without a dentist, and it is not a verdict on any ICB, practice or dentist. It covers adults registered with a GP, speaking for themselves, so children are not in it. It records what people remember and how they understood the question. It says nothing about private care beyond the share who say they prefer it. And it cannot show differences between towns or practices inside an ICB, because the dental answers are not published below ICB level.

Questions we get asked about this data

How hard is it to get an NHS dental appointment in my area?

Type your council, city or integrated care board into the search box above the chart in section 2, or open the file. In 2026 the survey's estimates of the share of people who tried in the past two years and did not get an NHS appointment ranged from 10.2% in Coventry and Warwickshire to 38.3% in Devon, with England at 18.5%. Each board's estimate has a margin of error of between 0.6 and 2.4 points either way.

Is it getting easier to get an NHS dentist?

Among people who try, yes. 23.7% did not get an appointment in 2024 and 18.5% in 2026, and 27 of the 30 ICBs that can be compared improved by more than chance. But the share of all adults who tried and got an NHS appointment is almost unchanged, 38.5% and 38.8%, and fewer people tried: 52.4% in 2024 and 49.7% in 2026.

Why is there no 2024 figure for some integrated care boards?

Because their boundaries changed in April 2026. Six of today's ICBs took in part of an ICB that was split up, and the survey's 2024 results were only published for the old areas, so a like-for-like figure cannot be worked out.

For editors

The file, nhs-dental-appointments-gp-patient-survey-2026.csv, has one row for England, each NHS region and each integrated care board, with ONS codes, confidence intervals and the number of people who answered.

The survey figures in it are official statistics from the GP Patient Survey 2024, 2025 and 2026, published by Ipsos on behalf of NHS England, and are reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Please credit them with this line: “Source: GP Patient Survey, NHS England, run by Ipsos. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.” Our own additions, which are the comparisons with England, the rank ranges, the pooled 2024 figures and the shares of all adults, are free to reuse under Creative Commons BY 4.0 with attribution to Practice Radar. Practice Radar is independent of NHS England and Ipsos, and neither has reviewed or endorsed this analysis.

When quoting an area, please give its margin of error. The survey cannot say which single board is highest or lowest: Devon cannot be told apart from Somerset, nor Coventry and Warwickshire from Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent. The figures are what people reported, counted by the area of their GP practice. They do not count appointments and do not measure any ICB, practice or dentist.

Jack Henty, who compiled this analysis, co-owns Bollington Dental Practice in Cheshire and founded Practice Radar, which measures local dental markets for practices. He is available for interview.

Contact: hello@practiceradar.co.uk