The British Dental Association (BDA) says that dental practices should not have to pay to register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The BDA's submission to the CQC's consultation on fees emphasises the financial pressures confronting dental practice, the failure of the CQC regime to add any value and the considerable time practices must invest in becoming registered, and concludes that a fee for registration would be inappropriate. Furthermore, the response says, proposed registration fees could reduce dentists' ability to invest in their practices.

The BDA has calculated that small single-handed dental practices, often vital to the provision of dental care in rural and deprived areas, would contribute an average of 0.64% of their turnover to paying the proposed £1,500 fee – an inequitable consequence of the CQC's proposals.

In other news, a survey by the BDA has shown that patients failing to attend NHS dental appointments in England could be denying significant numbers of other people the chance to access care. The survey suggests that committed NHS dentists in England each lose the equivalent of almost two weeks a year because patients fail to turn up for appointments.

'This problem needs to be tackled and the BDA believes that the Government should consider reintroducing a fee for patients who miss appointments to deter them from doing so,' said John Milne, Chair of the BDA's General Dental Practice Committee. The fee for missed appointments was abolished in 2006.

Finally, the BDA museum has been honoured with a prestigious Jodi Award for its involvement in a project focused on adults with learning disabilities. The museum received the Digital Access for People with a Learning Disability award 2010 as it was the principal setting for the digital documentary film, No Fairies.

The project saw a group of adults with learning disabilities visit the museum at the BDA's headquarters in London, where they used its unusual collection of dental equipment and artefacts as inspiration to create their own digital films. The final film incorporates a series of dental-themed animation films produced by each of the participants, and can be viewed at http://www.bda.org/museum/learning-and-access/films/.