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 people have adequate access to be able to (a) register and (b) gain an appointment with an NHS dentist.

Dental patients are not registered to a particular practice. A dental practice can accept a patient for a course of treatment and there are no geographical restrictions on which practice a patient may attend.  NHS England’s customer service centre can also advise patients on the availability of dental services, while patients requiring urgent care should contact NHS 111.  Commissioners and practices have also been reminded of the importance of maintaining updated information on availability via NHS.UK.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have asked practices to deliver 100% of contracted units of dental activity and 100% of units of orthodontic activity to safely improve access for patients. An additional £50 million for NHS dentistry was provided for the final quarter of 2021/22 to provide urgent care to patients.