Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to require the Northeast and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board to submit proposals to ensure that NHS patients have access to NHS dental services near to where they live.

The Northeast and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) is proactively issuing regular communications updates to patients and local stakeholders regarding the pressures facing National Health Service dentistry locally, whilst seeking to build resilience through local initiatives that seek to improve access to unscheduled urgent dental care for those in greatest clinical need.

Since taking on NHS Primary Care regulatory dental commissioning responsibility from NHS England on 1 April 2023, the Northeast and North Cumbria ICB have agreed to the establishment of a Local Dental Crisis Task and Finish Group to explore further ways in which the ICB could seek to address NHS dental access and workforce pressures in addition to the

NHS Long term workforce strategy, and also committed to an independent oral health review of the North East & North Cumbria area with a view to the findings becoming available by October 2023.

The steps outlined above will help to inform the ICB's future commissioning of NHS dental services. There are no plans to require ICBs to submit proposals on their commissioning of NHS dental services.

In July 2022, we announced a package of dental system improvements which outlined the steps we are taking to meet oral health need and increase access to dental care across all regions in England. We know more needs to be done and we continue to work with the sector and NHS England to consider further changes which will be announced shortly.