Sarah Champion MP welcomes almost 20K extra urgent dental appointments for South Yorkshire

The Labour Government has announced that hundreds of thousands of people, including in Rotherham, will soon be able to access urgent and emergency

dental care as the NHS rolls out 700,000 extra urgent appointments, delivering

on Labour’s manifesto commitment.

Sarah Champion, Member of Parliament for Rotherham welcomed the announcement, describing the new appointments as ‘vital’ and ‘desperately needed’.

In South Yorkshire, 17% of patients who tried to see an NHS dentist in the last two years were unable to do so, with access to NHS dentistry increasingly a lottery across the country.

The announcement marks the start of the government and NHS delivering on the manifesto pledge to provide extra urgent and emergency dental appointments to address the crisis in NHS dentistry.

In South Yorkshire 19,983 additional urgent care appointments are to be

delivered.

After over a decade of failure, the Tories shockingly left millions of people in England with unmet need for dentistry. They brought in a New Patient Premium scheme that didn’t have any impact for new patients, with figures this week revealing that £88 million was wasted on the scheme.

Commenting, Sarah said:

“Everyone in Rotherham knows the scale of the challenge facing NHS dentistry after years of failure under the Tories. I raised this time and time again with the previous Government, including highlighting cases in Rotherham with patients left unable to eat solid food due to lack of dental care. But my campaign was ignored by the Tory Government. It is a relief to see the new Government taking immediate action that is long overdue.’

‘In recent years it has become near impossible to get an NHS dental appointment, and it is scandalous that the number one reason that five to nine year olds are admitted to hospital is because of tooth decay.’

‘Of course it cannot be rebuilt overnight, but I am delighted that this Labour Government is taking such an important step not only repairing NHS dentistry but making it fit for the future.”

Stephen Kinnock, Minister of State for Care said:

“We promised we would end the misery faced by hundreds of thousands of people unable to get urgent dental care. Today we’re starting to deliver on that commitment.’

‘NHS dentistry has been left broken after years of neglect with patients left in pain without appointments or queueing around the block just to be seen.’

‘Through our Plan for Change, this government will rebuild dentistry – focusing on prevention, retention of NHS dentists and reforming the NHS contract to make NHS work more appealing to dentists and increase capacity for more patients. This will take time but today marks an important step towards getting NHS dentistry back on its feet.’