Dental Services: Great Yarmouth
(asked on 9th December 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will provide emergency funding to areas with the most severe dental shortages, including Great Yarmouth.
We are aware of the challenges faced in accessing a dentist, particularly in more rural and coastal areas such as Great Yarmouth.
In 2024/25, the Government invested around £3.7 billion on primary care dentistry. We want to ensure that every penny we allocate for dentistry is spent on dentistry, and that the ringfenced dental budget is spent on the patients who need it most.
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 Great Yarmouth constituency, this is the NHS Norfolk and Waveney ICB.
We have asked ICBs to commission extra urgent dental appointments across the country, with appointments more heavily weighted towards those areas where they are needed the most.
ICBs are also recruiting dentists through the Golden Hello scheme. This recruitment incentive will see dentists receiving payments of £20,000 to work in those areas that need them most for three years.
We are committed to delivering fundamental reform of the dental contract before the end of this Parliament. As a first step, we published the Government’s response to the public consultation on shorter term improvements to the NHS dental contract on 16 December 2025. The changes will be introduced from April 2026. These reforms will put patients with the greatest needs first while incentivising urgent care and complex treatments. Further information is available at the following link: