Ring before 9.30am — three slots are held back every morning.
Ruth or Denise answers. They will ask three things: where it hurts, how long it has hurt, and whether the side of your face is swollen. That call takes about ninety seconds and nobody is put on hold.
Ring 111 and ask for the County Durham urgent dental service. They triage and book you into whichever practice is on the rota that night.
If your face or throat is swelling, or you are struggling to swallow or breathe, that is 999 or A&E at University Hospital of North Durham, not a dentist.
14 Lower Kings Road, Durham DH1 4JK
Two people are usually reading this: someone whose tooth is hurting right now, and someone who has been putting it off for years. The red bar above is for the first. The rest of the page is for the second.
Nothing on this list is a guide price with an asterisk. You are given a written plan with the price of every item on it before anything is booked, and that plan is what you pay. If a filling turns out to need a crown, we stop and tell you the new number before we carry on.
Seeing someone
Forty minutes. Full mouth and gum charting, X-rays if you need them, oral cancer check, and a written plan with every price on it before you leave.
Free on the practice plan.
Same day, twenty minutes, to get you out of pain. Any treatment that follows is priced separately and agreed first.
Booked when there is real gum disease to treat rather than a scale and polish.
With a registered adult, private or plan. On the NHS, children are free anyway.
Treatment
£145 for a small one, £245 for a large one across the biting surface of a back tooth.
Two visits, ninety minutes each. Almost always followed by a crown, so budget for both.
Porcelain bonded or full ceramic; the shade is matched against the guide at the top of this page.
Placed and restored here by Tomasz. Includes the scan, the implant, the abutment and the crown. Nothing is added later.
Custom trays, three weeks of gel, and a review. Legally this can only be done by a registered dental professional.
Prices held for twelve months from the date of your written plan. Laboratory work is included in every figure above — you will not get a separate lab bill.
A missed appointment with no notice costs the practice a clinician's hour. The first one is free; after that it is £40, and we will always ring you first.
You pay one band charge per course of treatment
Check-up, X-rays, a scale and polish if it is clinically needed, and advice. Also the charge for an urgent appointment.
Everything in Band 1 plus fillings, root canal treatment and extractions. Six fillings cost the same as one.
Everything in Bands 1 and 2 plus crowns, dentures and bridges.
Bring your MATB1 or the child's birth certificate. This is the appointment most people miss and it is the one we most want you to have.
Bring the award letter or certificate. If you are not sure whether you qualify, ring and ask before you cancel — the fine for getting it wrong is £100 and it is easy to avoid.
Some treatments are not available on the NHS at all: whitening, white fillings on back teeth, implants in most cases, and orthodontics for adults. Those are on the private sheet, and we will tell you which list you are on before we start.
Our NHS contract covers children, exempt adults and our existing NHS patients. Paying adults are on a waiting list — see the top of the page for how long it actually is.
This is an FDI chart — the numbering every dentist in the country writes in your notes. Pick a treatment and the teeth it usually involves light up. Tap a tooth and it tells you what it is called and what we do to it. Prices are the same ones on the fee sheet above.
Swipe to see every tooth →
Upper right first molar · 16Hover or tap any tooth. The list on the right marks every treatment that tooth is involved in.
A letter from the principal dentist
If it has been six years, or nine, or you genuinely cannot remember — this part is for you, and I have tried to write it the way I would say it.
Nobody here is going to tell you off. Not a raised eyebrow, not a sharp intake of breath, not a comment about how long it has been. I have been doing this for nineteen years and I have never once thought less of somebody for the state of their teeth. People stop going because they are frightened, or because they could not afford it, or because one bad appointment years ago put them off, and none of those are moral failings. The only thing that matters to me is what we do next.
Here is what a first visit is actually like. You sit in the chair upright — we do not tip it back until you say so. We talk first, for as long as you need. If you want, the first appointment can be a conversation with nothing in your mouth at all; some people book that and come back a fortnight later for the examination, and that is completely fine. When we do look, I tell you what I can see as I go, in plain words, and you can stop me at any point by lifting your left hand. That is a real signal, not a formality: hand up, instruments out, we stop.
If you cry, we stop, you have a minute, and we carry on when you are ready or we book another day. It happens most weeks. Nobody in this building finds it remarkable and nobody will mention it afterwards.
If your teeth are in a bad state, you will not be given a lecture and you will not be handed a three-thousand-pound plan on the first day. You get an honest list of what needs doing, in the order it needs doing, with a price against each line, and we start with whatever is hurting or whatever is about to. Some people work through that list over two years. That is a perfectly good way to do it.
For anxiety we have three things that genuinely help: appointments booked at double length so nothing is rushed, topical numbing gel before the injection so you do not feel the needle, and inhalation sedation — the gas you may have had in labour — which takes the edge off completely and wears off in ten minutes so you can drive home. For bigger treatment we can arrange intravenous sedation with a visiting sedationist, which most people describe as having slept through it. Ask for me or for Mo; between us we do most of the nervous appointments here.
And if you are not ready to book yet, ring anyway and ask for Denise on reception. She has talked a lot of people through this and she does not put anybody on a list for doing it.
Practical note: you do not need a referral, you do not need to have been to a dentist recently, and you do not need to bring anything except a list of your medicines. If you had a bad experience somewhere else, you are welcome to tell us about it or to say nothing at all.
Four clinicians, all of them here for years rather than months. Nobody is locum. If you want a particular one, say so when you book — it usually costs you a week's wait and it is worth it.
Principal dentist
Root canal treatment and nervous patients. Set the practice up above the old post office in 2009 and has been in the same surgery since.
Dentist · implants
Crowns, bridges and implants, which he places and restores himself rather than sending you to London. Speaks Polish.
Hygienist & therapist
Gum treatment, and fillings for children — she can do them without you needing a dentist appointment as well. Extremely good with under-tens.
Dentist · emergencies
Runs the morning emergency list and the two late evenings. Trained in inhalation sedation, so most of the anxious appointments end up with him or with Priya.
Concept design: the four portraits above are drawings, not photographs of anybody — on a live Kalen Tech build these would be the practice’s own team, photographed against the surgery lightbox. GDC registration numbers are handled the same way — footnoted once in the footer rather than repeated on every card.
The practice plan
Collected by direct debit. Cancel with a month's notice, no exit fee.
Children on a parent's plan: £7.20 a month, or free on the NHS.
Finance for larger treatment
Anything over £500 can be spread. We use a dental finance provider, not a payday lender, and you apply here in about ten minutes with a soft credit check that does not mark your file.
Larkspur Dental Ltd is an appointed representative for consumer credit. Registration details go in the footer when the practice signs off.
If the number is too much
Tell us. It is the most common conversation we have and it never causes a problem.
8am to 6pm weekdays, 9am to 1pm on the Saturdays we open. Ruth and Denise answer; neither of them is a call centre. This is the fastest route and the one we would pick.
For people who would rather not speak to anyone, which is a lot of people. Send your name and roughly when suits; you get a reply with two or three times to choose from, usually within the hour during opening times.
New patient examinations and hygienist appointments can be booked directly against the live diary. Emergencies are not bookable online on purpose — we need to hear how bad it is before we give you a slot.
The door is open 8am to 6pm. If you are in pain and you turn up, you will be seen or given a time the same day — you may have to wait an hour in reception, and there is tea.
After you book
If you need to cancel
Ring or text, any notice is better than none, and the first missed appointment is never charged. Two working days' notice lets us give the slot to somebody in pain, which is the actual reason we ask.
We do not run a star rating on this page because an average of two hundred numbers tells you nothing about whether your root canal will hurt.
“Fourteen years since I had been to a dentist. I was expecting a telling off and got a cup of tea and a plan on one sheet of paper. Took two visits before anything went near my mouth and nobody made me feel stupid about that.”
“Broke a front tooth on the Saturday morning of the half marathon. Rang at ten past nine, seen at eleven, walked out with it rebuilt and you genuinely cannot tell. Charged the £75 he quoted on the phone and not a penny more.”
“My nine-year-old needed two fillings and had worked herself into a state about it. Frances let her hold the mirror and narrate the whole thing. She has asked when she can go back, which I did not expect to be typing.”
“Implant to replace a lower molar I lost in 2019. Quoted £2,150 in March, paid £2,150 in July, and the four appointments in between started on time. The scan and the crown were both included, which two other quotes had left out.”
Parking
Getting in
Closed on bank holidays. Between Christmas and New Year an emergency clinic runs 9am to 12noon — the dates go on the front door and on the answerphone in the first week of December.
Emergency slots: three are held back every weekday morning and released at 8am. That is why we ask you to ring before 9.30 rather than book online.
Out of hours
Ring 111 and ask for the urgent dental service. They triage, then book you into whichever County Durham practice is on the rota that night. You do not need to be their patient and there is an NHS urgent charge of £27.40 unless you are exempt.
111This counts as a dental emergency
This is 999 or A&E, not a dentist
Nearest A&E is University Hospital of North Durham. Dental infections that reach the airway are rare and genuinely dangerous; nobody will think you overreacted.
This can wait until morning