House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts: Fixing NHS Dentistry

Summary

In recent years we have become familiar with the idea of “dental deserts” – areas of the country where it is impossible to get basic dental treatment on the NHS.

The situation was already bad five years ago when, pre-pandemic, only half of the adult population (49%) had access to an NHS dentist. Covid accelerated the decline and now only 4 in 10 have access.

This report, from the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts. explains that in 2024 the then government launched a dental recovery plan. There were three main goals: to deliver an additional 1.5 million courses of treatment in 2024–25, to improve children’s oral health through the Smile for Life programme, and to introduce measures to support the dental workforce.

The Committee’s judgement on the plan is blunt. They say that it has “comprehensively failed to deliver improvements in access to NHS dentistry”. One consequence is that “the most vulnerable patients continue to suffer the most from long–standing failures in the system”.

The underlying cause, according to the Committee, was that “The modelling that underpinned the dental recovery plan was flawed, and even if the plan had performed in line with expectations it was never actually ambitious enough to meet its stated aim of ensuring that everyone who needs to see an NHS dentist would be able to".