About finddentist.co.uk

A free, independent tool that helps UK residents find NHS dentists actually accepting new patients.

finddentist.co.uk was built in 2026 in response to the ongoing NHS dental crisis. By that time, millions of UK residents had spent over two years unable to register with an NHS dentist — with BBC, Guardian and ITV reporting weekly stories of people resorting to "DIY dentistry".

Who runs this site

This site is run by the team behind finddentist — a small group of independent developers and editors based in the UK who got fed up watching family members ring twenty dental surgeries in a row to be told "books closed indefinitely."

We publish under one team byline rather than individual names, for two reasons. First, the directory work and the editorial work are genuinely collective — data syncs, page reviews, and patient-report moderation are shared across the team. Second, we'd rather you trust the process, the sources, and the data than the name of a single person you've never met. Everything on this site is verifiable through the NHS sources we link to.

If you need a specific contact for a press, data correction, or partnership query, use the addresses on our contact page.

Why we built it

We are not dentists, NHS staff, or industry insiders. We are people who found ourselves on the wrong side of the dental access problem and realised the tooling didn't exist. The official NHS Find a Dentist page returns lots of names but its "accepting new patients" flag is updated by surgeries themselves — often months late. We started this project to close that single gap with daily data syncs and patient verification.

How the data flows

  1. Nightly NHS sync. Every night around 04:00 UK time we pull every NHS-registered dental practice in England from the NHS Directory of Healthcare Services API (v3). Names, addresses, postcodes, contact details, opening hours, facilities, and the official accepting-new-patients flags all come from this source.
  2. Patient reports. Anyone who has recently called a surgery can submit a short report on its current status. Three independent matching reports promote a surgery to Verified by patients. Single reports are visible but do not override the NHS feed.
  3. Daily aggregate refresh. Stats (city totals, accepting percentages, postcode-area pages) are recomputed from the synced data, so what you see on a city page reflects last night's feed plus any patient reports in between.

How patient reports are protected from abuse

  • Every submission is rate-limited per IP (max two reports per dentist per IP within 24 hours).
  • IPs are SHA-256 hashed before storage — plain IPs are never written to our database.
  • An obvious-spam filter rejects submissions containing URLs, repeated phrases, or unusual character ratios.
  • Reports flagged as spam by automated checks are hidden but not deleted, so we can audit patterns later.
  • The Verified by patients badge requires three independent matching reports — a single report cannot change a surgery's headline status.

If you are a dental practice and your listing is wrong

The fastest fix is to update your details in NHS Profile Manager — we re-sync from the NHS feed every night and will pick up the change automatically. If you need a manual correction or want to flag a problem on our side, email data@finddentist.co.uk from a practice domain address.

We are not the NHS

finddentist.co.uk is run independently. We are not affiliated with the NHS, NHS England, or any dental practice. We don't accept payment from surgeries for listing or ranking. The data attribution at the bottom of every page is there because of NHS data terms, not because we have any kind of partnership with the NHS.

How we make money

The site shows display ads (Google AdSense). That's the only revenue source. Listings, ranking, status badges, and patient reports are never influenced by advertisers. There is no paid tier, no subscription, and no upsell on this site.

Coverage

We list every NHS dental practice in England that publishes to the NHS Directory of Healthcare Services, plus NHS practices in Scotland (Public Health Scotland) and Northern Ireland (BSO), and private practices from the CQC register — over 13,000 surgeries in total. Wales uses a separate system and is on the roadmap.

Editorial policy

Guides and treatment-cost pages are written by the team. Before publishing, every guide is checked against current NHS England, NHS BSA, and CQC sources, and every numeric claim (prices, eligibility thresholds, wait times) is linked back to the source it was taken from. Updates are reviewed quarterly and after any official NHS policy change (e.g. annual band-charge revisions).

Guides are information, not personal advice. They explain the system you're navigating; they do not replace a consultation with a registered dentist.

Correction policy

If you spot a mistake on any guide, treatment-cost page, or dentist listing, please email data@finddentist.co.uk with the URL, the error, and (where possible) the correct source. We aim to acknowledge corrections within 2 working days and fix verified errors within 5 working days. Corrections that change the meaning of a published page are noted with the updated date.

Data accuracy policy

  • Practice details (name, address, contact info, accepting-new-patients flags) are taken from the NHS Directory of Healthcare Services and re-synced every 24 hours, with hourly partial syncs for the most-watched practices.
  • Where our data conflicts with the NHS site, the NHS site wins — please flag the discrepancy and we'll re-pull immediately.
  • Patient-reported status is always shown separately from the NHS feed, with timestamps and report counts visible on the practice page.
  • Aggregates (city totals, "X accepting") are computed live from the same query as the listing below, so the headline and the list never disagree.

Patient-report abuse policy

  • Every submission is rate-limited per IP. The same IP cannot file more than two reports on the same surgery within 24 hours.
  • IPs are SHA-256 hashed with a per-site salt before storage. We do not retain plain IP addresses.
  • Submissions containing URLs, telephone numbers, repeated character runs, or other common spam signatures are auto-flagged and hidden from public view pending manual review.
  • A surgery's headline status only changes after three independent matching reports; a single report cannot override the NHS data.
  • Practices may request a review of any patient report they believe is inaccurate by emailing data@finddentist.co.uk from a verifiable practice domain.

Advertising policy

The site is funded by display advertising delivered through Google AdSense. Advertisers have no influence whatsoever on listings, ranking, status flags, or which surgeries appear when you search a postcode. Sponsored or paid placements (if we ever offer them) will always be clearly labelled. We do not currently take paid listings, paid alerts, or referral commissions of any kind from dental practices.

Listing claim & correction (for practices)

If you are a UK NHS dental practice and your listing on finddentist.co.uk is incorrect:

  1. Fastest: update your details in NHS Profile Manager. We re-sync nightly from the NHS feed and your changes will appear within 24 hours.
  2. Direct: email data@finddentist.co.uk from a practice domain address with the change you need. We respond within 2 working days.
  3. Patient reports: if a specific patient report is inaccurate, link it in the email and we will review and remove if appropriate.

Contact