Even the Tooth Fairy is feeling the pinch! Payments are down 10% in Doncaster

The average payment from the Tooth Fairy in the city is £1.45 per tooth - down from £1.61 five years ago.

It matches the average figure for the whole of Yorkshire.

The survey found that in affluent parts of South Yorks children are getting £5, £10 or even £20 notes under pillows instead of the more traditional coins.

Just under one in ten children (9%) get £10 per tooth - amounting to £200 for a full set of all 20 baby teeth.

The results come from a new survey of 5,000 parents by Dental Phobia, a website set up to help the millions in the UK who fear going to the dentist.

Dental Phobia set up panels throughout the UK including Yorks to find out how much average Tooth Fairy payments were in all the UK’s leading cities and counties.

It found that 27% of children get a £1 coin for each lost two, 25% get a £2 coin, and 14% get less than £1 - most typically 50p.

A further 12% get £5, 9% get £10, 3% get between £10 and £20 and 2% get more than £20.

Only 8% of kids never receive a visit from the Tooth Fairy.

Nine out of ten parents (92%) said their children under five believed in the Tooth Fairy - the same figure as for Santa Claus.

More than a third of parents (36%) admitted that their children spent their Tooth Fairy money on sweets.

A further 31% spent it on toys, with savings (21%) books (7%) and clothes (5%) the other most popular answers.

Dentist Rhona Eskander, a world leader in dental care, said: "The Tooth Fairy is feeling the pinch in Doncaster like the rest of us.

“Payments are down by 10% over the last five years but encouragingly the Tooth Fairy is still coming out almost every time a child in Yorkshire loses a tooth. It is just that they are leaving a little less money.

"As dentists, we find that parents and children who are most excited by the Tooth Fairy and make sure that it visits with each lost tooth also take dental care most seriously, too. Tooth Fairy children brush their teeth most regularly with little parental pressure and suffer the least tooth decay.

“The Tooth Fairy makes caring for your teeth a positive part of childhood development and it can reduce the fear of the dentist for many children.”

Dr Eskander, a consultant with Dental Phobia, said most children have a full set of 20 milk or baby teeth by the age of three and start losing them by the age of five or six. They tend to fall out in the same order they came, with the front centre lower teeth going first.

It takes six or more years to grow a full set of 28 adult teeth - 32 if you include wisdom teeth which arrive right at the back of the mouth around the age of 20.

Dental Phobia has a free guide to overcoming dental fear and has a national database of specially trained dental phobia certified professionals so patients can find an expert where they live.

Dental Phobia also has a five-minute test on its website so a patient can discover quickly if they are dental phobic.

It has helped more than 100,000 dental phobic patients since it was started.