Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help improve access to NHS dental services in Leeds North West constituency.

No specific assessment has been made. In September, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care, including in Leeds North West.

The plan includes improvements to ensure dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, allowing greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver National Health Service treatment, whilst enabling full use of the dental team. The plan also includes streamlining processes for overseas dentists and holding the local NHS to account for dentistry provision. In addition, Health Education England is also reforming dental education to improve the recruitment and retention of dental professionals.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) does not currently rate providers of primary dental care services. The CQC publishes an assessment against five ‘key aspects’ which determine whether a dental provider is meeting its regulatory requirements. These are:

- Treating people with respect and involving them in their care;

- Providing care, treatment and support that meets people's needs;

- Caring for people safely and protecting them from harm;

- Staffing; and

- Quality and suitability of management.

The CQC provides information for the public to find local dentists and profiles, which display the regulatory performance and inspection reports.