Crowds gather in hope of NHS dental treatment

Long queues have once again formed outside a Bristol dental clinic as people hoped to register as NHS patients.

Similar scenes were pictured outside St Paul's Dental Surgery, which is celebrating a year since it opened in 2024.

The surgery, which has taken on 13,700 NHS patients since opening - including some from as far away as Cornwall - opened a further 100 in-person registrations on Thursday to celebrate the milestone.

Shivani Bhandari, the surgery's operations manager, said the whole country was dealing with a "dental health crisis".

"The UK doesn't have enough dentists," she said.

"Things need to be changed at the top because we don't have the workforce. The workforce is not there for NHS or private dentistry as well," she added.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said it had inherited a situation where "desperate" dental patients were "forced to queue around the block for treatment".

"We are rebuilding NHS dentistry but it will take time," they said.

"We are starting with an extra 700,000 urgent dentistry appointments to help those who need it most and will reform the dental contract to encourage more dentists to offer NHS services to patients."

Carol Sherman, a dental campaigner who lives in St Paul's, said: "You've got people left, and you're talking young children, in total agony and pain. And parents looking on and not being able to do anything.

"The day this opened couldn't have been a day sooner."

Busharo Ali, who also lives in St Paul's, said: "I've got three girls that haven't been to the dentist for five years, so hopefully they're going to be checked and won't have a lot of decay and tooth loss.

"I'm hoping it's going to improve their general oral health, and we can benefit and it will be affordable."

Of the 13,700 NHS patients surgery staff had treated in the last year, Ms Bhandari said some had come from as far as Plymouth and Cornwall.

The new patients also included some five to six year olds who had not seen a dentist since birth.

Ms Bhandari said: "It's a really sad state to see."

Carla Denyer, Green Party co-leader and MP for Bristol Central, said the "astonishing scenes" outside the practice last year was a "testament to how broken NHS dentistry is".

"A year later, things haven't got better. Government data out last month showed that 94% of new patients who try to access NHS care fail to secure it – meaning that for new patients, NHS dentistry has essentially ceased to exist," she added.

She also said the government's increase in employers national insurance could also hit the industry, with dentists potentially not being reimbursed for the extra running costs, despite providing public healthcare services.

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