According to the British Dental Association (BDA), the announcement of a dramatic reduction of the fees that many dental practices will pay for registration with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) is a major climb-down.

Providers with up to three practices will pay significantly lower fees than were proposed in the CQC's consultation, with the cost for those with a single location reduced from £1,500 to £800 and the cost for those with two or three locations reduced from £3,000 to £1,600.

Dr Susie Sanderson, Chair of the BDA's Executive Board, said that she was pleased to see the climb-down on fee levels as many dentists in the UK took part in the BDA's red-tape campaign making their concerns on the issue clear. However, Dr Sanderson remarked that 'although the fees for many dentists have been reduced, it is important to remember that practices additionally incur significant hidden costs in demonstrating their ongoing compliance with CQC's standards. Scarce time and money are being diverted away from patient care to satisfy the burden being imposed by this unnecessary extra bureaucracy.'

Dr John Milne, Chair of the BDA's General Dental Practice Committee, commented that 'Sadly, [the late announcement of these fees is] typical of the shambolic nature of the process that dentists have been, and are still being, subjected to. CQC's challenge now is to demonstrate that it is making a difference for patients...'

This month the BDA also urged the Department of Health not to abandon their plans for dentistry to be commissioned by a new national board. The call follows the House of Commons' Health Select Committee's suggestion that responsibility for commissioning should instead be moved to new NHS local commissioning authorities.

'We have a real opportunity to introduce some consistency into the commissioning of dentistry,' said Dr Milne. 'Local commissioning of dentistry by primary care trusts has not been a huge success. It's true that there is a lack of detail about how some of the connectivity between national and local health organisations would work in the new structure, but the answer is to fill in that detail... We urge Government to think very carefully.'