The Government’s fundamental reform programme for primary dental care services was introduced from 1 April 2006. Primary care trusts (PCTs) were given responsibility for planning and commissioning primary dental services and provided with local, devolved, dental budgets.
Wirral PCT reported the following expenditure on primary dental care services in 2006-07, the first year of the new service arrangements. This has been set out in the following table. However, data on expenditure by individual parliamentary constituency are not collected centrally.
£000 Gross expenditure 20,110 Income from dental charges paid by patients 4,879 Net expenditure 15,231 Note: Resource expenditure, as noted in end year accounts
Prior to April 2006, most primary dental care services were provided under former general dental service (GDS) arrangements. These were demand led services where the pattern of dental expenditure was largely determined by where dentists chose to practice, and how much NHS work they chose to undertake. PCTs were not given fixed funding allocations, except in those areas where personal dental services (PDS) pilots were established to test alternative, local commissioning arrangements and new forms of contract remuneration.
Local level data on primary dental care expenditure prior to April 2006 is held by the Information Centre for health and social care. Copies of the report ‘NHS Expenditure for General Dental Services and Personal Dental Services: England 1997-98 to 2005-06’ have been placed in the Library and is also available at:
www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/primary-care/dentistry/nhs-expenditure-for-general-dental-services-and-personal-dental-services:-england-1997-98-2005-06