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 restore full NHS dentistry services in (a) England and (b) West Sussex; and what the planned timescale is for ensuring that new patients can be registered across West Sussex.

NHS England has set a threshold of 60% of normal activity volumes for the first six months of 2021/22. Dental practices have been asked to meet as many prioritised needs as possible, focussing first on urgent care and vulnerable groups followed by overdue appointments. There are also 718 urgent dental centres continuing to support the provision of services across England. In addition, NHS England and NHS Improvement have provided a flexible commissioning toolkit to local commissioners to help focus the available capacity on those that need it most and to reduce oral health inequalities.

In Sussex, NHS England has offered practices additional funding for delivering appointments during evenings or weekends to patients who do not have a regular dentist. Two practices will be offering these sessions and NHS England are in the process of arranging additional services. There is no longer a requirement for registration in order to receive care.