Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of number of NHS dentists in Bournemouth East constituency.

In 2022/23, 349 dentists in the Dorset Integrated Care Board performed National Health Service work. This is equivalent to 44.9 dentists per 100,000 population. The Dentistry Recovery Plan will make dental services faster, simpler and fairer for patients and will fund around 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment.

The plan sets out a number of actions which will improve access for patients, by helping the sector to recover activity more quickly, including the introduction of a New Patient Payment Premium of up to £50 for each new patient. This is on top of the funding dental practices already receive for delivering that care. We will further incentivise dentists to do more NHS work by raising the minimum Units of Dental Activity rate to £28. As part of the Dentistry Recovery Plan, we will launch a new Golden Hello scheme for dentists who want to move to those areas which persistently struggle to attract dentists into NHS work.