Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department provides ringfenced funding for dentistry to the Devon integrated care board.

We are currently considering arrangements for 2024/25. NHS England provided guidance for the integrated care boards (ICBs) that required dental allocations to be ringfenced in 2023/24, with any unused resources to be re-directed to improve National Health Service dental access in the first instance, rather than being spent on other services. In November 2023, NHS England confirmed that where ICBs had not spent all of their allocation on improving access to dentistry, they would be able to retain any underspend, and use it to balance their bottom line and any other pressures. ICBs will decide how to use any forecast underspend in line with this guidance.