Self-employed dentists in England and Wales earned on average £89,062 before tax in 2007/2008, according to the latest NHS Information Centre figures on dentists' earnings.

The Centre published the report Dental earnings and expenses – England and Wales, 2007/08 detailing dentists' pay during the second year of the new dental contracts. The report considers only the earnings and expenses of full and part-time, self-employed primary care dentists who undertook some NHS work in England and Wales in the year, and covers both their NHS and private work.

Practising dentists who held a contract with a primary care trust (PCT) or local health board (LHB) to provide NHS dental services earned on average £126,807 before tax, with average gross earnings of £345,651 and average expenses of £218,843.

Dentists who worked in a practice but who did not hold a contract with a PCT or LHB earned on average £65,697 before tax, with average gross earnings of £99,208 and average expenses of £33,512.

The BDA said that the statistics reflected a year when dentists were working hard to make the new dental contract of 2006 work. John Milne, Chair of the BDA's General Dental Practice Committee, said, 'These statistics reflect the second year of operation of the 2006 dental contract in England and Wales, a time when dentists were working hard to overcome problems with the new arrangements and make them work for their patients. Many practitioners were contending with the uncertainty of potential clawback of their contract values. Dentists, almost uniquely in the NHS, carry the business risk of their surgeries and are responsible for providing premises, equipment and staff.'

Health minister Ann Keen said, 'NHS dentistry is improving and many dentists are now keen to expand their NHS work. Today's report confirms that NHS dentists have good levels of earnings.'

Dentists' earnings for 2007/08 cannot be compared with those of 2006/07 because the scheduling of payments made to some dentists following the introduction of the new contractual arrangements on 1 April 2006 had a one-off effect in that financial year.

The report also looks at earnings and expenses by the working patterns of the dentists, their age and gender, their level of orthodontic activity and the strategic health authority in which they worked.

The NHS Information Centre also published a separate report which looks at dental earnings in Northern Ireland. Dental earnings and expenses, Northern Ireland 2007/08 experimental statistics shows all self-employed dentists earned on average £89,756 before tax, with contract-holding dentists earning on average £121,174 before tax and dentists without a contract earning on average £66,134 before tax.

The statistics for the report are experimental and differences in contractual arrangements between Northern Ireland and England and Wales mean that comparisons between the two reports cannot be made. The report for England and Wales is available online at www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/dentalearnexp0708 and the report for Northern Ireland at www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/dentalearnexp0708ni.