HOW I DID IT B

anning Dental Group was established to provide something we believed was missing in the UK dental market, to become a bridge between NHS and private dental treatment.

Having realised there was a chronic shortage of accessible, quality dental care to meet today’s patients’ needs, we wanted to offer a range of high-end treatments in an environment patients would expect to find in a private practice, but at an affordable cost.

The group was set up to provide all major dental specialist treatments in-house, inspired by the values of Scandinavian healthcare.

We opened our first practice in Brentford, west London, which was a completely new project for us as well as for the builders and designers involved, and there was a lot to learn.

Since then, and as we open our seventh practice with more to come, we are at the stage where we have the perfect practice blueprint in which to replicate our winning formula.

The Practice

Our new dental centre in London’s Blackfriars is the latest step in Banning Dental Group’s ambitious growth strategy and is designed to be the company’s flagship practice.

It was originally an empty commercial shell with just under 3,000 square feet of space. Although this was a suitable size for a practice, we decided to add a mezzanine floor, taking it closer to 5,000 square feet.

This gives us nine treatment rooms, including one for our Skin Clinique centre for face and body aesthetics, as well as a state-of-the-art in-house dental laboratory in association with Zirkonzahn – the first dental laboratory using Zirkonzahn products in a dental practice setting in the UK.

Our enduring aim is to create a very different type of dental practice and move away from small rooms, lack of natural light and closed off spaces. For Blackfriars, instead of using a traditional dental design company, we approached Remarcable Design – interior designers specialising in office and retail space – and asked them how they would envision a dental practice to look.

The team asked us: ‘Why do dental practices have to be scary places? Why do they have so much closed space? Why have the reception desk hidden away?’

To which our reply was: ‘Okay, let’s change all that!’

We knew this approach would cost several times more than what other new clinic owners would spend. But changing perceptions of UK dentistry, which is our mission, starts with dental professionals changing their views of contemporary dentistry.

The Practice

ADDRESS: Banning Dental and Skin Clinique Blackfriars, 9 St George’s Circus, London SE1 8EH PHONE: 020 3325 3250

EMAIL: blackfriars@banningdental.co.uk

WEBSITE: www.banningdental.co.uk

The Build

We began negotiations to buy the freehold of the property in autumn 2019, but we first needed to obtain planning permission to install the mezzanine floor. This was a lengthy process, but we finally took ownership in December 2021.

Building the mezzanine floor and staircase was a big project and a big investment for us. We used Landmark Building and Property Services for the build that ran from January to November 2022.

Installing an extra floor allowed us to have our dental laboratory and offices upstairs, leaving the clinical services including surgeries, CBCT, decon and treatment coordinator rooms fully accessible to patients on the ground floor.

We appointed Stephen Green & Associates as radiation protection advisers to carry out a full assessment of our planned X-ray units and surgery/imaging rooms, and to advise on which walls needed to be lead-protected or otherwise.

Our bespoke dental cabinetry came from Modwood. Dentsply Sirona supplied and fitted nine Intego and Sinius dental chairs,