I am delighted to see today’s NHS Dental Recovery Plan, delivering both a short term boost in access to NHS dentists as well as long term changes to increase NHS dental provision.
In the next 12 months dentists will be paid to provide an extra 2.5 million appointments to get on top of the Covid backlog, with extra payments to see new patients and those who have not received a checkup in the last two years. In Norfolk, on top of this, the NHS are adding Dental Vans to get good care to hard to reach areas.
Today’s announcement is only the start. The government is also increasing the number of people being trained as dentists and dental therapists by more than 40%, as well as making it easier to employ dentists with international qualifications right now.
For those of you who follow my work you will know that I have been campaigning for an undergraduate dental training school at the University of East Anglia to join the existing postgraduate training centre. This is the long term solution to the lack of dentists locally. If you grow up in Norfolk the nearest place you can train to be a dentist is Birmingham. The UEA are ready to go and I will be working to make sure that some of the additional 40% of trainee dentists will be from Norfolk, trained in Norfolk, in order to practice in Norfolk.
If you haven’t already done so, you can complete my dentistry survey here: https://www.jeromemayhew.org.uk/dentistry-survey
