Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to ensure the NHS dentistry budget is fully used in the 2023-24 financial year.

From 1 April 2023 responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. ICBs are responsible for identifying areas of need and to determine the priorities for investment.

NHS England has provided guidance for ICBs that requires dental funding to be ringfenced, with any unused resources re-directed to improve National Health Service dental access in the first instance. A schedule setting out the dental ringfence has been issued to ICBs. NHS England’s 2023/24 revenue finance and contracting guidance, which provides more detail, is available at the following link: https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/2023-24-revenue-finance-and-contracting-guidance/