Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the total budget is for dental care in England in each of the next five years; and how much of that budget is allocated to dental care education in (a) schools and (b) the community.
NHS England has a legal duty to commission primary care dental services to meet local need and therefore does not have a specified dental budget. Local teams commission dentistry based on the local oral health needs assessment undertaken in partnership with local authorities, which identifies the level of dental need for a particular community.
Health Education England is responsible for funding dental education. Information on funding for dental education is only available for 2016/17 and can be found in the table below.
Training Category | 2016/17 |
Undergraduate Dental training | 122,296,360 |
Postgraduate Dental - Foundation Level | 80,998,539 |
Postgraduate Dental - Specialist Level | 14,328,506 |
Dental Nurses | 8,455,506 |
Dental Technicians | 1,495,340 |
Dental Hygienists | 8,110,376 |
Dental Therapists | 7,454,032 |
Total | 243,138,660 |