Responding to NHS England's dental recovery plan Sarah Walter, director of the NHS Confederation’s ICS network, said:

“This long-awaited recovery plan is a welcome step towards addressing the crisis across England’s dental sector caused by historic underinvestment and the decline in NHS dentist numbers.

“Having only recently taken on responsibility for dentistry, Integrated Care Systems (ICS) share the government’s commitment to improving access and services for patients, and particularly the focus on children, who can often end up in A&E when they can’t access dental care. While good progress has been made our members know that a lot more work is needed to take advantage of the opportunities to tackle health inequalities and keep patients out of hospital.  

“The new £200 million funding to encourage dentists to see new patients is a welcome start to improving access to patients who have not been to a dentist in years. Too often it is those in most need of dental care who have the biggest problems accessing care. This focus is essential to reducing health inequalities and helping to prevent avoidable A&E admissions.

“But the elephant in the room is the national dental contract, which doesn't do enough to make NHS work attractive to dentists. Increasing the payment for Units of Dental Activity (UDAs) is a step in the right direction, but may not go far enough in rethinking UDAs, particularly given high inflation.

“Radical reform of the contract is needed to fix the problems in dentistry for patients. We look forward to working with government to make the necessary changes.”