Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the extent to which dental practices which have NHS patient availability are updating the NHS Find a Dentist webpage to show this; and whether he plans to take further steps to encourage practices to update those listings.

On 25 November 2022 we introduced a contractual responsibility for National Health Service dentists to keep their NHS.UK profiles up to date so that patients can find a dentist more easily. Practices are required to update their NHS.UK profiles at least once every 90 days, including information on whether they are accepting new patients.

Commissioners will have access to a report showing which practices are non-compliant, with monitoring due to come into effect from end of March 2023.