In light of reports of a significant number of people in Dumfries and Galloway moving from NHS dental services to paying privately for dent…

Payments to independent contractors providing NHS dental services, responsible for almost all primary care dental service provision, is funded through a national General Dental Services (GDS) budget. This is a non-cash limited budget where National Services Scotland make payments on behalf of NHS Boards directly to independent contractors. There is no separate budget for each NHS Board for these services. NHS Boards do have budget for the Public Dental Service (a specialist service provided by employees of the Board) as part of their general allocation. Information that is held at NHS Board level.I can confirm that there has been no reduction in funding for NHS dental services. On the contrary, as part of the 2025-26 budget we have increased funding for primary care dental services by 15%. This takes total funding to over half a billion pounds for the first time and means that over the course of this Parliament, we will have increased investment in primary care dental services by 33%.A breakdown of GDS spending for the 2024-25 financial year can be viewed at https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/nhs-dental-data-monitoring-report/nhs-dental-data-monitoring-report-quarter-ending-march-2025/