Vulnerable patients’ long dental waits ‘buried’

NHS England has been accused of continuing to “bury” evidence of the very long waits for dental treatment endured by people with complex needs, the British Dental Association has said. 

Children and adults with special care needs, such as significant learning disabilities, can often only have teeth extracted under general anaesthetic in hospital, and some wait years for treatment.

NHSE vowed to publish waiting list data for community dental services (CDS), which treat these groups, for the first time from October 2025, but now does not expect to do so until early 2027.

Refusing a freedom of information request from HSJ for the data, it blamed “data quality concerns”, adding: “As we need to allow time to assess the impact of ICB and provider actions on data quality and return rates, it is likely that the data will be published in early 2027.”

BDA chair Eddie Crouch told HSJ the “waiting times these patients face have been buried”, adding that “Parliamentary questions have gone unanswered, freedom of information requests deftly dodged”. In July, ministers answered a written question asking how many patients were waiting longer than 18, 26 and 52 weeks, but refused to give figures.

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Source: HSJ, 5 November 2026