Dental Services

(asked on 4th September 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure patients can access timely NHS dental treatment.


Answered by
Neil O'Brien Portrait
Neil O'Brien
This question was answered on 7th September 2023

Our plan for dentistry, to be published shortly, will build upon the first package of reforms agreed in July 2022, which included changes to banding and the introduction of a minimum Units of Dental Activity value. Our plan will include addressing how we continue to improve access, particularly for new patients; and how we make National Health Service work more attractive to ensure NHS dentists are incentivised to deliver more NHS care.

It is now a legal requirement for dentists to update their information on the NHS website to improve information available to patients. The regulations came into effect in November 2022. Patients who are struggling to find a local dentist can contact NHS England’s Customer Contact Centre for assistance or contact NHS 111 if seeking urgent care.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, published on 30 June 2023, sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. These include a 40% increase to dentistry undergraduate training places by 2031/32. To support this ambition, we will expand places by 24% by 2028/29, taking the overall number that year to 1,000 places.

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