Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the dental recruitment incentive scheme on reducing dental practice vacancies in the Ely and East Cambridgeshire Constituency.

The responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population is delegated to the integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. For the Ely and East Cambridgeshire constituency, this is the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB.

ICBs are continuing to recruit dentists through the Golden Hello scheme. The scheme offers a £20,000 recruitment incentive payment to dentists to work in those areas that need them most. The recruitment of dentists in underserved areas remains a priority and ICBs continue to be able to use the scheme in 2026/27, alongside locally led schemes.

Golden Hello data will be published this year and will consist of data showing the regional distribution of the original allocation of posts and the number of posts recruited to at both a national and regional level.