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None of this is set in stone or absolute, none of this is ‘true’, but a very, very clever friend of mine spent some time recently using a powerful AI LLM to project what's going to happen to the growth in UK dentistry over the next year.

They also looked at the sources that the LLM was searching to find the data to provide the answers to the questions, which at some points is more interesting even than the answers themselves. LLMs can find data in lots of different places that you would never imagine, and looking at the sources is fascinating. I'm not going to tell you what some of the sources were for the LLM here because someone may shut them down, and it's so useful and helpful as a potential competitive advantage to be able to ‘scrape’ (that is a horrible word) data from sites that are publicly accessible.

The headline news, though, was this, and it's probably not surprising.

Number one, at best, NHS dentistry will grow at 2.5% through 2026.

What that means is that if you're entirely NHS with no private income, you're going to grow at or less than inflation, so you're going to shrink. Your team are not going to want less money and is probably not going to be satisfied with a pay rise of less than 2.5%. What you'll have to do there is cut your costs, which for someone who is already entirely NHS will seem devastating because nobody who's supplying these things is going to let you cut your costs.

Number two, well-run private dentistry will grow at 10%, therefore, if you have a really well-run dental practice which is doing most of the right things, you're liable to get close to double digit growth.

The key here,  though, is ‘well run’, if you have a mixed practice where some of it is growing at 2.5% and you're cutting costs, it's very difficult to see how that will be a well-run private practice, which isn't cutting costs and is trying to provide better service and so the environment becomes more and more challenging.

Almost all independent practices in the United Kingdom are mixed; therefore, your growth rate will sit somewhere in the region of 5%, depending upon the mix of NHS and private. 5% growth is tough because your staff are living in a cost-of-living crisis and want more than 5%, and so do your labs, your supply company, and everybody else.

As we said here many times before, dentistry used to be a difficult business in which to fail. It's becoming easier and easier to fail now.

You need to know what's going on, you need to know your numbers, you need to make decisions based on objective information.

Everyone's going to find it a little bit harder.

Blog Post Number - 4413

Colin Campbell, Chris Barrow, and an intrepid group of dentists will be cycling across the plains of Tanzania from Kilimanjaro in early February 2026. If you would like to support the charity, Bridge to Aid,  and this extraordinary challenge, please click here.

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