Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the press release entitled Patients to benefit from improved access to dental appointments, published on 21 February 2026, how many (a) urgent and (b) additional dental appointments have been provided by the NHS in (i) total and (ii) each month since the General Election; and how many additional urgent dental appointments he expects the NHS to provide by the end of 2026-27 above the baseline he is using to monitor progress against his target.

The following table shows the available data for the number of National Health Service urgent dental treatments and total courses of dental treatments delivered each month from July 2024 to October 2025:

Source: Monthly National Dental Activity data – England July 2023 to October 2025, available at the following link:
https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/dental-activity-data-england-july-2023-to-october-2025

Data for April 2025 to October 2025 should be treated as provisional. Final data for 2025/26 will be published in August 2026. Data for dentistry is measured in courses of treatment, not appointments. One course of treatment can be more than one appointment.

1.8 million additional courses of NHS dental treatment have been delivered in the seven months between April and October 2025, compared to the same period before the general election, nearly half of which were delivered to children.

We are broadening the scope of the commitment to deliver additional appointments so that they can be used for more patients, not just those who meet the clinical criteria for “urgent” care.

We will ensure a continued urgent care safety net by requiring, from April 2026, high street dentists to deliver 8.2% of their total contract value as urgent or unscheduled care.