Faster, simpler and fairer: our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry (7 February 2024)

Summary

The impact of the pandemic on dental services was devastating. While the data is showing that the situation has improved since the first year of the pandemic, there is much more work to be done - particularly to improve the provision of care across England.

The government has announced a plan to make dental services faster, simpler and fairer. It aims to improve dental services by making them:

• faster for patients through our new patient premium to support dentists to take on new patients and a new marketing campaign to help everyone who needs one to find a dentist
• simpler for patients and for dental staff by streamlining and tackling bureaucracy, with a wider set of workforce reforms to maximise the skills across the entire dental clinical team
• fairer, particularly for our rural and coastal communities, by introducing new dental vans to bring dental care to our most isolated communities, offering ‘golden hello’ incentives to encourage dentists into under-served areas and supporting those practices with the lowest rates of payment for their work

Content

The plan has 3 components.

1. In 2024, we will significantly expand access so that everyone who needs to see a dentist will be able to. This will begin with measures to ensure those who have been unable to access care in the past 2 years will be able to do so - by offering a significant incentive to dentists to deliver this valuable NHS care. We are introducing mobile dental vans to take dentists and surgeries to isolated under-served communities.
2. We will launch ‘Smile for Life’ - a major new focus on prevention and good oral health in young children, to be delivered via nurseries and other settings providing Start for Life services, and promoted by Family Hubs. We will also introduce dental outreach to primary schools in under-served areas, and take forward a consultation on expanding fluoridation of water to the north-east of England - a highly effective public health measure.
3. We will ramp up the level of dental provision in the medium and longer term by supporting and developing the whole dental workforce, increasing workforce capacity as we have committed to do in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, reducing bureaucracy and setting the trajectory for longer-term reforms of the NHS dental contract.