Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 23 July 2024 to Question 244 on Dental Services: North Cornwall, how many dentists accept NHS patients in North Cornwall constituency; and what progress he has made on (a) providing additional dental care appointments and (b) setting up an innovative access pilot project in Cornwall.

As of 29 November 2024, there were 11 open dentistry practices in the North Cornwall constituency, none of which were showing as accepting new adult patients. This data is sourced from the Find a Dentist website, and is matched to constituencies based on the postcode data shown on the website, which is available at the following link:

https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-dentist

We are working to ensure that patients can start to access the 700,000 additional urgent dental appointments as soon as possible, targeting the areas that need them most.

The responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to the integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. The Cornwall and Isles of Scilly ICB recently approved the Primary Care Strategy at its November meeting. This included information on work to improve dental access, such as the Lostwithiel Pilot Programme. This programme is a collaboration between the National Health Service and a Lostwithiel dental surgery, enabling children and the most vulnerable patients to access an NHS dentist. This pilot aimed to address unmet dental health needs by targeting priority groups and reducing waiting list backlogs.