Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many ICBs have retained their unspent dental allocation in each of the last five years.

The requested information is not available. Dental budgets have been ringfenced since 2023/24. The Government wants to ensure that every penny we allocate for dentistry is spent on dentistry, and that the ringfenced dental budget is spent on the patients who need it most. Where there are unused resources, NHS England will seek to ensure that these are used to improve dental access.

The total underspend for the 2023/24 financial year was £392 million. Information on underspend for the 2024/25 financial year is currently unavailable, as this data has not yet been validated. Prior to the 2023/24 financial year, a dental ringfence was not in place.