Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions her Department has had with (a) dental practices in South Leicestershire constituency and (b) the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board on (i) dental contract (A) reform and (B) value, (ii) units of dental activity rates and (iii) taking steps to increase access to dentistry.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning National Health Service dental services. Our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for patients, and will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments. The plan sets out a number of actions which will improve access for patients, by helping the sector to recover activity more quickly, address underlying issues, and set out the action needed for longer term reform of the system. This includes a new patient premium to support dentists in taking on new NHS patients, an uplift to the minimum Units of Dental Activity (UDA) rate, new dental vans to bring dental care to our most isolated communities, and the Golden Hello incentives to encourage dentists into under-served areas. We are also developing further recommendations for dental contract reform, and will consult with the sector before an announcement on this, later this year.

Data on the number and value of NHS contracts in the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB, and the number of UDAs commissioned and delivered, is available on the NHS Business Services Authority’s Open Data Portal, at the following link:

https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/access-our-data-products/open-data-portal-odp

This inquiry will scrutinise the progress and operation of City Region and Growth deals, following up on the Committee’s previous work examining them in 2021. We will explore the lessons learned since the deals launched to understand what has been delivered so far and barriers to their success. We will examine how satisfied stakeholders are with the level of progress, engagement and transparency on the deals from the UK Government.