Dental Services: Dorking and Horley
(asked on 20th February 2026) - View Source
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 (1) help tacklethe number of NHS dental practices in and around Dorking and Horley that are not accepting new NHS patients; and (2) increase access to NHS dentists accepting new patients in those areas.
Patients in England are not registered with a National Health Service dental practice, although many NHS dental practices do tend to see patients regularly. There is no geographical restriction on which practice a patient may attend. Some dental practices may operate local waiting list arrangements.
Integrated care board (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning primary care services, including NHS dentistry, to meet the needs of the local population. For the Dorking and Horley constituency, this is the Surrey Heartlands ICB.
In the Surrey Heartlands ICB, the ICB for Dorking and Horley, 14,625, or 4%, more NHS dental treatments were delivered in April to October 2025 compared to the same period before the election.
The Government is committed to ensuring people can access urgent dental care when they need it. Over the past year, ICBs have been commissioning additional urgent dental appointments and there is now an urgent care safety net available in all areas of the country. We are broadening the scope of the 700,000 dental appointments commitment so that the additional appointments can be used for more patients, not just those who meet the clinical criteria for “urgent” care.
We are committed to delivering fundamental reform of the dental contract before the end of this Parliament. As a first step, on 16 December we published the Government’s response to the public consultation on quality and payment reforms to the NHS dental contract. The changes will be introduced from April 2026. These reforms will put patients with greatest need first, incentivising urgent care and complex treatments. More information is available from the following link: