Dental Services: Mid Cheshire
(asked on 4th October 2024) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate his Department has made of the number of (a) adults and (b) children in Mid Cheshire constituency who (i) are not registered with an NHS dentist and (ii) have been unable to access NHS dental treatment in each of the last five years; and what steps his Department is taking to improve access to NHS dentistry in Mid Cheshire constituency.
Patients in England are not registered with a National Health Service dental practice, although many NHS dental practices do tend to see patients regularly. There is no geographical restriction on which practice a patient may attend, allowing patients the choice of where they would like to receive a course of treatment. Therefore, we cannot provide the number of people who are not registered with an NHS dentist.
The responsibility for commissioning primary care, including dentistry, to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. For the Mid Cheshire constituency, this is the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB.
We do not hold information on the number of adults and children unable to access NHS dental treatment, but the GP Patient Survey (GPPS) gives information on the percentage of adults who tried to get an NHS dental appointment in the last two years but were not successful in doing so. The GPPS is available at the following link:
The Government is committed to tackling the challenges for patients trying to access NHS dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and to recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and retaining NHS dentists.