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 increase the availability of dental appointments in (a) Ipswich constituency and (b) England.

In September 2022, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care across England, including in Ipswich. These will increase access to National Health Service dentistry whilst making the NHS dental contract more attractive to dental practices.

The changes we have implemented include a contractual requirement for NHS dentists to keep their NHS.UK profiles up to date to make it easier for patients to seek treatment, adherence to risk-based recall intervals, and enabling dentists to make better use of their team resources. The contractual changes of 28 December 2022 also provide for the commissioning of 110% of contracted Units of Dental Activity so that practices can deliver more NHS care, particularly in those areas where NHS dentistry is less prevalent.

In circumstances where parents are unable to access an urgent dental appointment for their child directly through a NHS dental practice, they are advised to contact NHS 111 for assistance.

We are holding further discussions with the British Dental Association and other stakeholders for additional reforms of the NHS Dental System coming shortly this year.