New NHS Practices Opening

Details: Published: Thursday, 20 March 2025 08:41; Written by Peter Ingle; Hits: 2304

Overall, NHS dental access may appear to be on a downward trajectory, but there are also accounts of recovery. In Somerset, recent stories have reflected both aspects of the state of NHS dentistry.

BBC Somerset has reported that two new NHS dental practices are now set to open, with NHS Somerset now committing to funding 400,000 UDAs annually across the sites, worth up to £1.4m.

The new NHS dental practices are set to open in Chard and Crewkerne, and NHS Somerset is recruiting dentists to run the practices. It is hoped that the services could begin seeing patients between late May and November.

However at the same time as this announcement, a report, by the ICB was presented to Somerset Council’s scrutiny committee which warned that NHS dentistry in the county remained, “in crisis".

The practices will be the first large-scale procurement of NHS dental services in Somerset since the ICB took over responsibility from NHS England in April 2023.

The new practices will offer a mix of NHS and private dentistry for adults and children, targeting areas that have seen reductions in NHS services in recent years.

NHS Somerset had also committed to providing a new dental surgery in Wellington but this has been delayed as it has been unable to find a suitable premises for it.

The report included evidence of the shortcomings of the previous government’s Dental Recruitment Incentive Scheme (DRIS), announced in February 2024.

Although the heavily publicised plans featured a £20,000 "golden hello" scheme to encourage dentists to work in areas of need, it had not resulted in a single new NHS dentist being appointed in Somerset.

This was despite NHS Somerset’s efforts to incentivise up to 15 dentists through the DRIS. The specific reasons that Somerset was unable to use its quota of DRIS places were not provided, but it is likely that the fundamental unattractiveness of the contract will have played a part.

The DRIS was one part of the Conservative government’s Dental Recovery Plan, which also proposed mobile dental vans as part of the effort to improve access in rural and deprived areas such as Somerset. These too, have not materialised. The report noted that, "The failure to roll out mobile dental vans has been a missed opportunity to address the needs of rural and underserved communities."

The report did acknowledge efforts to expand urgent dental appointments in the county even though they had met with limited success. NHS Somerset is currently allocating £400,000 per year to an urgent dental helpline. This operates via NHS 111, and assesses and refers patients needing emergency treatment.

According to the report, the urgent dental helpline is providing essential support, but further capacity is needed to meet increasing demand. As a result, NHS Somerset is reviewing its approach and exploring options to expand urgent care services for 2025/26.

At the same time The Somerset County Gazette carried a more encouraging feature about the Wellington practice. Gideon Amos, the recently victorious Liberal Democrat MP for Taunton and Wellington, said he had received confirmation from NHS Somerset that they would support the plan and that premises for the new practice have been found. As they will require refurbishment work, an opening date has yet to be given. The provider will be offering a mix of NHS and private dental services.

“This is great news – I’m delighted that our efforts have been rewarded,” the MP said. “In 2022, before I was a Member of Parliament, I launched a survey of dental provision by the NHS in Taunton and Wellington. It showed that fewer than half of the people there had access to an NHS dentist. Three years on, things have, incredibly, got worse. Over half the constituents who contacted me did have an NHS dentist but were then told it was going private, so they lost it. That decline has been consistent.”

He noted that the Liberal Democrats have been pressing the current Government, “both by making the NHS and care our number one priority at the General Election and by working with the British Dental Association and others.”

The access crisis is likely to remain a go-to in Liberal Democrat campaigning. They had, he said, “stopped at nothing in Parliament to push Ministers to provide more NHS dentists. This surgery, welcome though it is, won’t solve the whole of Somerset’s problems, so we will continue to make better dental provision and a better NHS generally, our number one priority.”