592 London practices are accepting new NHS patients — not 23
DATA RELEASE · 20 AUGUST 2026
Correction, 28 August 2026. This release originally reported that 23 of 2,409 London practices — 1.0% — were accepting new NHS patients. That figure was wrong. It was read from NHS flags held in our own registry, which had gone stale. Reading each practice's own NHS profile instead gives 592 practices accepting new NHS patients, 56.1% of the 1,055 that publish a status at all. The 1,354 practices with no published status are not counted either way. The headline and the figures below have been corrected; the original wording is preserved in this notice.
592 of the 1,055 Greater London dental practices that publish an NHS acceptance status are accepting new NHS patients — 56.1% — according to a DentistFees reading of every practice's NHS profile across all 33 boroughs, August 2026.
The figure is far better than our first reading suggested, and still leaves NHS access thin: fewer than half of London's 2,409 registered practices publish an NHS status at all, and a published status is not a promise of a free slot this week. Across a register of 2,409 practices — from Westminster (283 practices) to smaller boroughs with fewer than 30 — NHS availability is now the exception rather than the norm, with the overwhelming majority of practices operating privately.
The census draws on the Care Quality Commission register and NHS ODS data, both published under the Open Government Licence. It is released as open data so that patients, researchers and journalists can see the picture borough by borough.
Key figures
- 2,409 CQC-registered dental practices across 33 Greater London boroughs.
- 592 (56.1%) accepting new NHS patients.
- Largest borough by practice count: Westminster (283); followed by Barnet (139) and Camden (107).
Full data, method and per-borough breakdown are on the London Dental Price Index page. The dataset is free to use under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to DentistFees; bespoke cuts are available via our press & data page.
Practice and NHS data under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (CQC, NHS ODS). Figures are an August 2026 snapshot; NHS acceptance changes frequently. Methodology.