About 150 desperate people lined up outside the Bristol practice from the early morning on camp chairs and with coffee flasks despite Labour planning to end the NHS dentistry crisis
People queue outside dental centre as registration opens
Dentists have warned “we are yet to see the change we need” after huge queues returned at the weekend.
Camping chairs and flasks of coffee were seen as hundreds of people queued for hours outside a practice in Bristol on Saturday after it announced it would be taking on some new NHS patients. They included elderly people unable to have their NHS operation until they had seen a dentist and pregnant women unable to get their oral health checked.
Saturday’s scenes were a repeat of those seen before the General Election where police were called to control crowds outside another Bristol practice and have sparked calls for the Government to do more to tackle the NHS dentistry crisis.
Time-lapse of people waiting in the queue
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Eddie Crouch, chair of the British Dental Association, said: “The return of these queues is hardly unexpected. We’ve heard the right promises, but we are yet to see the change we need to give NHS dentistry a future. These scenes won’t be consigned to history until we see a decisive break from underfunding and failed contracts.”
The Mirror launched the Dentists for All campaign which saw Labour pledge to reform the “flawed” NHS contract, which leaves dentists making a loss treating patients who need most care. It pays dentists the same if a patient needs three fillings as if a patient needs 20 fillings.
However the Treasury has so far refused to reverse a situation where the Government is only paying for half the population of England to get an NHS dentist.
One man in the queue outside Lodge Causeway Dental Centre told ITV News: “I’m desperate to have my teeth taken out. I’ve got a heart appointment at the hospital and I can’t get this operation carried out unless I get seen by a dentist.”
Another of the around 150 people queuing said: “I was up at about half past five this morning to get an NHS dentist. I’ve been trying for the last two years to get an NHS dentist in Bristol, and it’s been impossible.”
A third said: “When I arrived earlier, people were already sitting out in camping chairs with flasks of coffee, which is kind of crazy in this day and age, so I think people are quite desperate to get places. You hear stories about people removing their own teeth, so people must be pretty desperate, I think.”
The queues were a repeat of scenes seen outside St Pauls Dental in February, which followed unprecedented scenes in 2024 when police attempted to disperse people desperately seeking NHS care.
The Mirror’s Dentists for All campaign has reported how a decade of Tory funding cuts resulted in an almost a complete closed shop – with millions locked out of accessing NHS care. We revealed 96% of dentists are not taking on new adult NHS patients and told horror stories of people ripping out their own teeth and going into debt to travel abroad for private treatment.
The Government is in the process of reforming the NHS dental contract to fulfill Labour’s General Election promise to rescue the system. It is hoping to stem an exodus of NHS dentists to the private sector.
However this contract reform will depend on the overall funding settlement. Dentistry got 3.3% of the NHS budget for England in 2010 but it is now down to 1.5%.
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The current £3 billion NHS dentistry budget for England is only enough to fund care for half the population. It has fallen from £3.6 billion during a decade of Tory rule and the British Dental Association says this equates to a funding cut of a third in real terms.
Evidence by dentistry minister Stephen Kinnock to the Health Committee earlier this year indicated that the Treasury is refusing to fund radical reform and any new contract will likely recycle current “underspends” where dentists have to return cash due to the flawed contract.
Last year the British Dental Association said there was £400 million underspend – much of which was quietly being syphoned off to other areas of the NHS.
This underspend occurs because money is clawed back from struggling dental practices who do not hit treatment targets, usually due to lack of staff. The NHS contract pays the practice for each Unit of Dental Activity – known as a UDA. A check-up is worth one UDA while a filling is worth three. On the other hand, if an NHS dentist treats more patients than their target then they receive no payment for it – effectively capping the numbers able to access a dentist.
Britain has the lowest ratio of dentists per capita of any country in the G7.