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 ensure that people visit a dentist every 12 months.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published guidance in 2004 which recommends that individuals are seen by a dentist at intervals set on the basis of their individual oral health. For adults the range is three months for those with the poorest oral health to 24 months for those with very good oral health. For children the range is three months to 12 months. The NICE guidance can be found at the following link:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg19

The Department supports the NICE guidance which is well established and well known to the dental profession.

We are currently testing a new way of providing National Health Service dental treatment within participating high street dental practices which includes dentists being given chair side clinical guidance helping them to set recall intervals that follow the best practice set out in the NICE guidance.