Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his planned timetable is for increasing available Units of Dental Activity in Somerset.

The responsibility for commissioning primary care services, including National Health Service dentistry, to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to the integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. For the Taunton and Wellington constituency this is the Somerset ICB.

Since 2024, a minimum Unit of Dental Activity (UDA) value of £28 is in place to support practices with historically low UDA rates. ICBs have the flexibility to influence the UDA rate locally, which may help to support local interventions. The current differential UDA rates across England also allow providers to use differing pay rates for associate dentists to reflect the local market rates.

In July 2022, ICBs were given new powers to unilaterally rebase a provider’s dental contract if they have consistently failed to deliver the UDAs required, within a contractual tolerance of 96%. In practice this means that ICBs can reallocate these UDAs to practices who are able to deliver them, meaning more available care for patients.

We are committed to fundamentally reforming the dental contract by the end of the Parliament, with a focus on matching resources to need, improving access, promoting prevention, and rewarding dentists fairly, while enabling the whole dental team to work to the top of their capability.