Plans to end NHS dental care crisis not working, warns spending watchdog

Plans to end the deepening crisis in access to NHS dental care are failing, leaving patients unable to get treatment, according to a warning from the government’s spending watchdog.

The National Audit Office’s (NAO) damning verdict on the “dental recovery plan” prompted patient groups to voice alarm that people’s struggles with decayed teeth represents “a serious public health concern”.

A pledge to provide an extra 1.5m treatments in England this year is in disarray amid falls in both the number of dentists doing NHS work and people receiving help from them.

There is “significant uncertainty” as to whether that ambition will be fulfilled because two key elements of the plan have not been achieved, an NAO investigation found. None of the promised new fleet of mobile dental vans has appeared and £20,000 “golden hellos”, to entice 240 dentists to work in areas of acute shortage, have only produced one extra dentist.

The plan, launched in February by the then Conservative government, promised that “everyone who needs to see a dentist will be able to do so” during 2024-25.

However, “based on initial analysis to date, the plan is not on track to deliver the additional courses of treatment,” the NAO concluded.

Even if the plan did provide what was promised, the NHS would still be offering 2.6m fewer treatments this year than before Covid hit in early 2020, it added.

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Source: The Guardian, 27 November 2024