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As a long-term Mazda car owner (Mazda3 - 16 years from new [bought elsewhere] and counting), my views are as follows:
The 6th year service has always been the most major, and thus most expensive one on their 6yr cycle. Saying that, it was quite a bump over my last one which was about £450. Maybe that's due to a combination of location of the glass palace and recent significant inflation.
The spark plugs are not the bog-stand type but iridium and should last for another 6 years/75k miles, hence why they aren't cheap in comparison. Technically you could use the cheaper standard ones if you do low mileage. How much that save in today's market, I'm not sure.
The 'health check' is an oft-used ploy by dealerships of most, if not all hues to get lucrative business on items that aren't difficult to replace, such as tyres, batteries and brake pads/discs.
My dealership (which is above average on post-sales customer care for Mazda dealers from the tales I've read on the Mazda3 owners' forum) said my 6 month-old new battery (supplied and fitted by the RAC man in July of that year) was in 'poor condition' at the end of 2020 service and 'might need replacing'.
Oddly enough it has lasted perfectly fine since then.
They haven't tended to do the same for the brakes except occasionally recommending they get a 'service' (not included in normal servicing because the brakes do bind a bit because of low use.
I tend to go by what I hear / feel when driving and have only had to have one set of discs and pads replaced in the entire ownership period, twice with a 'brake service' for lubrication of the parts so they don't bind.
If you feel confident about doing the brake servicing yourself (a friend of mine who owns an MX-5 does), then when its out of its 1yr dealer warranty, then by all means - it'll save you a decent amoutn of money.
With general servicing, it really depends upon either your own competence / confidence or that of your local indie to look after the car generally. For myself, I'm not allowed to service my car where it is kept as it's against my lease, but I wouldn't want to anyway, and I don't have enough confidence in local outfits to use them, so I stay with my dealership except for a few very minor / easy-to-do DIY items.
That does mean I pay more for servicing, but to be fair, they have gone above and beyond on a good number of occasions.
It may also make more of a difference if your car is a disel-engined one rather than a petrol (presumably yours is a gen-3 Skyactiv), as they are more susceptible to problems if they have done / do low mileage, short-distance driving and/or have not been properly looked after before the current owner. See the HJ reviews section for diesel engine-related issues.
In my view, many people offload the diesel-engined cars when they start to give trouble, not so much for the petrols, which often get PXed for a newer one (just because people like to have newer cars) or they go to another make because they find the Skyactiv-G engine a bit underwheling as regards performance. The diesels are fine on performance.
The (chain-driven) petrol engines are generally much more robust as long as they see good quality fresh oil every 12,500 miles or 1 year (whichever comes first).
As regards Mazda dealerships generally, from what I've read on the owners' forum, it appears to be a 50:50 split between reasonable / really good ones, and those that are really bad.
The forum (admitedly it's not exactly that well used these days) is here, including links to Mazda servicing / maintenace info and guides if you feel confident to DIY:
www.mazda3forums.co.uk
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