700,000 extra urgent dental appointments are set to be available, allowing hundreds of thousands of people across England to be able to access the emergency care they need. NHS has written to integrated care boards (ICBs) across the nation, asking each regional health chief to offer up thousands of additional appointments for urgent cases over the next year.
Access to NHS dentistry differs wildly by region across the country. Statistics from the GP Patient Survey 2024 show that around one in four patients who tried to see an NHS dentist in the past two years were unable to do so.
Previous interventions have failed to address the crisis in accessing NHS dentistry, such as the new patient premium, which cost £88 million but had no impact for patients. Recent stats show that the number of new patients accessing NHS dentists has declined by three per cent since the new scheme was introduced.
In line with the government’s Plan for Change, these extra appointments will be available from April and have been targeted at dental deserts — areas where it is particularly difficult to see an NHS dentist — such as parts of the East of England, where there are just 31 NHS dentists per 100,000 people.
Each ICB has a target of urgent appointments to roll out, depending on the local levels of unmet need for urgent NHS care, with the appointments to be for those that are in pain — including those suffering from infections or needing those requiring urgent treatment.
Stephen Kinnock, minister for state for care said: “We promised we would end the misery faced by hundreds of thousands of people unable to get dental care. Today we’re starting to deliver on that commitment.
“NHS dentistry has been left broken after years of neglect, with patients left in pain without appointments, or queueing around the block just to be seen.
“Through our Plan for change, this government will rebuild dentistry — focusing on prevention, retention of NHS dentists, and reforming the NHS contract to make NHS work more appealing to dentists and increase capacity for more patients. This will take time, but today marks an important step towards getting NHS dentistry back on its feet.”
