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 increase the number of NHS dentists accepting new patients in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England.

There are no geographical restrictions on which practice a patient may attend. NHS England’s Customer Contact Centre or NHS 111 can also advise patients seeking urgent care. NHS England asked dental practices to return to full delivery of contracted activity from July 2022, including in Coventry and the West Midlands. In September, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care.

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.