BDA welcomes turnaround on Scottish pay awards

The British Dental Association (BDA) has praised the Scottish government for agreeing to reconsider its stance on this year’s Doctors and Dentists Review Body (DDRB) pay award.

It had initially been planned that a 0.9 per cent uplift to the item of service fee for independent contractor dentists would apply only to the expenses element of the payment.

However, the BDA’s Scottish Dental Practice Committee (SDPC) argues that this approach was flawed, given that this element has already been taken into account in the DDRB recommendation to increase the individual items on the fee scale.

The Scottish government has now agreed that the 0.9 per cent pay increase should in fact be applied to the whole item of service.

Robert Kinloch, chair of the SDPC, said: “This comes after campaigning by the SDPC and we are pleased to see that our work persuading the Scottish government to look again at this situation has been worthwhile.”

In June, the BDA also called on the government to reconsider its stance on pay awards to dentists in Northern Ireland, suggesting that current plans do not reflect the rising costs faced by professionals.