The dental recovery plan is not on track to deliver a promised 1.5 million additional courses of NHS dental treatment this year, a National Audit Office (NAO) report has found, with two out of the plan’s four headline initiatives yet to be rolled out.
The report investigated the progress of the plan for 2024/25, including the development of the recovery plan and progress against its objectives.
It found that NHS dentistry is not on course to deliver the 1.5 million extra treatments, with only 1.13 million expected to be delivered through the new patient premium, which granted practices payments of up to £50 per new patient treated.
‘So far, data do not suggest that the new patient premium is on course to deliver the expected additional courses of treatment by March 2025, although NHSE also has data showing about a 14 percentage point increase in dental practices reporting that they are accepting new patients between December 2023 and September 2024,’ the report said.
However, the report said the plan’s ambitions would still mean that 2.6 million fewer courses of NHS dental treatment were delivered compared to 2018/19.
Two of the plan’s four headline initiatives have also not yet been rolled out by NHS England, according to the report.
The first of which is the mobile dental vans scheme for under-served communities. As of October 2024, no vans have been procured, said the report.
‘Potential market suppliers said that there may be challenges around the availability of vans and funding beyond 2024-25, but any further progress was paused when the general election was called,’ it added.
New ministers have now said it will be left to ICBs locally to decide whether they go ahead with procuring vans for the rest of 2024/25.
The second headline initiative not rolled out is the golden hellos, whereby around 240 dentists would be offered bonus payments of up to £20,000 to work in under-served areas for up to three years.
This scheme, despite having 274 practices being approved for a ‘golden hello’ post, the first dentist was only appointed in October.
‘As of November, neither the dental vans nor the ‘golden hello’ initiative are likely to deliver the expected number of additional courses of treatment by the end of 2024-25,’ said the report.
The report recommended that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England should ‘look to reflect’ on what has worked in the plan and build upon this to deliver ‘meaningful reform’.
It added: ‘A proper evaluation of this plan will be needed, as well as a review of whether they have sufficient reporting processes in place to make sure that they are getting back from ICBs the data they need to monitor progress with any future plan.
‘They will need to assess how they engage with ICBs and dental practices who are responsible for delivering NHS dentistry in local areas.’
Four headline initiatives in the dental recovery plan
- A new patient premium where participating dental practices receive a credit of units of dental activity (UDAs) equivalent to £15 or £50 (depending on the course of treatment) for eligible new patients,
- ‘Golden hello’ recruitment incentives of £20,000 (phased over three years) for 240 dentists to work in areas with recruitment and retention challenges in NHS dentistry,
- An uplift to the minimum value of a UDA to £28.
- Mobile dental vans to deliver some dental services to targeted communities.
In response to the report, a spokesperson for the British Dental Association (BDA) said: ‘Back in February we slammed this plan for failing to make a decisive break with the discredited NHS contract fuelling the access and workforce crisis in NHS dentistry.
‘Minor tweaks to a broken system, based on recycling existing budgets, represent a failed model for reform the new Government must reject.’
The BDA’s General Dental Practice Committee chair, Shawn Charlwood, said: ‘We warned at the outset that this Recovery Plan was unworthy of the title.
‘Unfunded, unambitious policies failed to make a dent in a crisis hitting millions. A new Government must show it is willing to learn from its predecessor’s mistakes.’
In September, figures from the Office of National Statistics found that more than 90% of adults without a dentist who tried to make an appointment in the past month were unable to.
During the election campaign, the Labour party pledged to ‘save NHS dentistry’ and provide an extra 700,000 urgent dental appointments per year ‘straight away’.
