How long does it take to sell a dental practice?

The short answer

• Private, incorporated, sold by shares: roughly two to three months once terms are agreed, because no NHS consent is needed and the company keeps its CQC registration.
• Private, sold as a business: three to four months, driven mainly by the buyer's CQC registration.
• Mixed or NHS: four to six months, and sometimes more. Commissioner consent runs to its own timetable.
• Any of the above with a problem in it: add two to three months. The problems are nearly always the same handful, listed further down.

Note what those figures start from. They begin at agreed heads of terms — the work of deciding to sell, understanding what the practice is worth and choosing a buyer comes before the clock starts.

Why the lawyers are rarely the bottleneck

Owners tend to assume a sale takes as long as the legal drafting takes. In practice the legal and regulatory tracks run in parallel, and it is the regulatory one that sets the real completion date. Three approvals do most of the work:

1. Commissioner consent for an NHS contract. Typically around six to twelve weeks, whether by the partnership route or by consent to a change of company control.
2. CQC registration. Where the buyer needs to register as a new provider, that application often determines the date, and lenders usually treat it as a condition of releasing funds. Where the buyer acquires the company, registration continues and this largely falls away.
3. Performers' List status. If the buyer is not already on the list for the region, expect eight to twelve weeks, and NHS care cannot be delivered under the contract until it is in place.

None of these can be hurried by goodwill or by paying someone more. They can only be started earlier.

What actually happens, stage by stage

Before you go to market

Establishing what the practice is worth, getting your accounts into a legible state, confirming who holds the NHS contract, and checking how long is left on the lease. Owners who do this properly shorten everything that follows, because most delays later are just problems found late.

Conversations and heads of terms

Weeks rather than months, if you are talking to a buyer who can decide for themselves. Heads of terms set the price, the structure, what your ongoing role looks like and the conditions the deal depends on. It is worth being slow here and fast afterwards rather than the reverse: vagueness at this stage is what causes renegotiation at the end.

Due diligence

Typically four to eight weeks, running alongside the regulatory applications. The buyer examines the financials, the NHS performance position, staff and associate arrangements, the lease, equipment and compliance. Preparation shows here — a practice that can answer questions in days rather than weeks moves visibly faster.

Regulatory approvals and finance

The longest stretch, and mostly waiting. This is where a well-run process shows its value: the applications should have been submitted at heads of terms, not at the end of diligence.

Completion and handover

Completion itself is a day. The handover is not: staff communication, patient continuity, systems, banking and the ongoing clinical role you agreed all land in the following weeks. Whether that period feels calm or chaotic has very little to do with the legal work and a great deal to do with how much of it was planned in advance.

What causes delay

• A contract-holder problem found in diligence. Most commonly, goodwill moved into a company while the GDS contract stayed in the owner's personal name. This is the single most disruptive discovery in a dental sale and it is entirely avoidable by checking first.
• Regulatory applications started late. Filed after diligence rather than alongside it, adding their full duration to the end of the process.
• A short or unassignable lease. Landlord consent takes as long as the landlord takes, and a lease with only a few years left affects both value and lending.
• Accounts that need reconstructing. Personal costs run through the business, inconsistent categorisation, or unreconciled figures. Every ambiguity becomes a question, and every question becomes a week.
• Chains of parties. Where the buyer needs their own funder, their own committee and their own advisers to agree in sequence, each link adds its own delay.

How to make it shorter

Start twelve to twenty-four months out if you can. Confirm the contract-holder position and sort the structure. Extend a short lease before it becomes a negotiating point. Get the accounts clean and keep personal costs out of them. Reduce how much of the practice depends on you personally — that protects the price as well as the timetable. Then, once terms are agreed, submit every regulatory application immediately rather than waiting for diligence to finish.

How we work

We are the buyer, not a broker, which removes a category of delay rather than a category of cost: there is no chain of parties to line up, no committee to convince after the fact, and the decision is made by the people you have been speaking to. We start the regulatory work at heads of terms and we tell you at the outset which specific approvals will govern your timetable, so the date is a plan rather than a hope.

This page describes how these transactions usually run; it is not legal advice, and the timescales quoted are typical rather than guaranteed.

Related reading: selling your dental practice, transferring your NHS dental contract, and share sale or asset sale.