Andrew Bingham – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Bingham on 2015-10-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the availability of NHS dentist places in (a) High Peak constituency, (b) Derbyshire Clinical Commissioning Group and (c) Tameside and Glossop Clinical Commissioning Group in each of the last five years.

Alistair Burt

NHS England is responsible for commissioning primary and secondary care dental services to meet local need. NHS England advises that oral health needs assessments for general dentistry are being conducted for areas that include Tameside and Glossop and Derbyshire.

Overall, access continues to increase with the latest access data showing 30 million patients were seen by a dentist in the 24 month period ending 30 June 2015. This is 1.7 million more patients than May 2010.

There is further to go, and this is why the Government is committed to increasing access still further through reform of the dental contract to incentivise dentists to focus on prevention as well as treatment and, by seeing patients at intervals appropriate to their clinical need, freeing up spaces for additional patients to be seen.