BDA Northern Ireland has written formally to accept the Department of Health's pay uplift offer for 2018/19.

The uplift for contractor General Dental Practitioners for 2018/19 will see the DDRB recommendation of 2% net of expenses being applied, equating to an actual uplift of 2.73% backdated to 1 April 2018. According to the Department of Health, this represents a total investment of £2.9 million in regional dental services.

Chair of the BDA Northern Ireland Dental Practice Committee, Richard Graham, commented: 'We acknowledge that this year's 2.73% uplift to fees and allowances represents the largest uplift GDPs have seen for some time. However, this is in a context of successive years of wholly inadequate uplifts of 1% pay caps, no uplifts, active cuts, and at a time when the cost of providing Health Service dentistry has increased significantly.

'A workstream has been set up to analyse the fall in Health Service income in response to a request by the BDA. We intend to continue to engage proactively with DoH and HSCB to highlight the fall in Health service income and increase in expenses.'