Dental Services

(asked on 1st March 2022) - View Source

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 availability of routine check-up appointments for NHS dental patients in (a) Southport, and (b) the north-west.


Answered by
Maria Caulfield Portrait
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
This question was answered on 3rd March 2022

National Health Service dental provision has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has reduced the number of available appointments in practices, including in Southport and the North West, due to necessary infection prevention and control procedures. NHS dentists have been asked to prioritise available capacity for urgent care, care for vulnerable groups and children, followed by delayed planned care.

We continue to monitor the delivery of NHS dentistry. Data for February 2022 indicates that an increasing number of courses of treatment are being delivered, including band 1 treatment and checks ups, in the North West and in the Cheshire and Merseyside Sustainability and Transformation Partnership area.

We have made £50 million available for NHS dentistry in 2021/22 to allow more patients to obtain an NHS dental appointment. Of this, £7,310,000 has initially been made available for the North West . We are currently developing proposals for dental system reform to improve access for patients.

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