Source: United Kingdom UK Parliament (video statements)
How is Government going to fix NHS dentistry?
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is examining the effectiveness of the Government’s plans to fix NHS dentistry.
The Committee will hear from senior officials at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England (NHSE), including DHSC’s interim permanent secretary Sir Chris Whitty, and NHSE’s Chief Executive Amanda Pritchard.
Just under half of the population had seen an NHS dentist in the 24 months pre-pandemic. This had only recovered to 40% by March 2024. The previous Government published its Dental Recovery Plan in February 2024, aiming to expand access to NHS dentistry over the next year. Other challenges for NHS dental delivery include the current dental contract acting as a disincentive to provide NHS care, falling numbers of dentists providing such care, and falling real-terms spend on NHS dentistry.
The NAO found that as of November 2024, it was not clear that any additional courses of treatment had been delivered under the recovery plan; just one dentist appeared to have been appointed under its new ‘golden hello’ recruitment scheme; and fewer new patients appeared to have been seen following the introduction of the Government’s new patient premium. Ministers had also decided to leave the procurement of mobile dental vans to local commissioners.
Other likely topics to be explored at the session include:
• The current condition of NHS dentistry and the impact of the dental recovery plan, which has an ambition to deliver an additional 1.5m courses of treatment by the end of March 2025;
• Addressing regional inequalities in access to dentistry, and the barriers to securing access to NHS dentistry for more people in England; and
• Future plans to recover NHS dentistry.