ICBs have been told to commission additional urgent dental appointments during the next financial year, funded from within dental allocations.
In a letter to ICBs on Friday (21 February), NHS England said it was asking ICBs ‘to commission additional urgent dental care capacity between April 2025 and March 2026’.
It added: ‘This is to be funded from within dental allocations.’
These urgent appointments are to fulfil the government’s manifesto pledge of 700,000 extra urgent and emergency dental appointments. They are to be targeted to the dental deserts, where patients typically struggle to access dental appointments.
Each ICB has been given a number of urgent care appointments to offer as a minimum (see box), based on estimates of unmet need. North East and North Cumbria ICB has been told to offer the most at 57,559 appointments, followed by Cheshire and Merseyside ICB (46,617) and West Yorkshire ICB (32,312).
The DHSC said ICBs would be required to purchase additional urgent care appointments over and above the level delivered in the 12 months up until June 2024. It said this baseline figure will be confirmed to each ICB once it is calculated.
However it added that it would not be mandating an approach to purchasing these appointments, and ICBs could for example either buy more appointments through new or recommissioned contracts, modify existing contracts, or use flexible commissioning.
It added that a national service specification and clinical guidance will follow to support the development of local commissioning plans.
The government also confirmed it would scrap the new patient premium, which was introduced in the dental recovery plan in 2024.
The British Dental Association’s General Dental Practice Committee chair Shiv Pabary said: ‘It’s progress, but Government could have fired the starting gun on commissioning urgent care last summer.
‘Action here will translate into just two extra slots a month for each NHS dentist. Ministers must now confront the failed contract that’s left millions with no options.’
He added: ‘Promised new money has gone. Instead, budget that should be funding routine care is being recycled.
‘What’s clear to us is the Treasury are banking on the crisis in dentistry not being solved in this Parliament.’
Ruth Rankine, director of the primary network at the NHS Confederation said: ‘NHS leaders share the commitment to improve access to dentistry services and welcome this announcement as part of the government’s manifesto commitment to roll out extra urgent appointments across the country to fix the crisis in NHS dentistry.
‘ICBs play an essential role in addressing oral health inequalities and improving access to NHS dental care. We know from our members that delivering supervised toothbrushing to children living in the most deprived areas in England will ensure a population health management approach to oral health is taken. Improving access to primary care dentistry services is also important, so it is a step in the right direction to have extra appointments delivered at ‘dental deserts.’
‘However, finances must accurately reflect the cost of treatment as the additional 700,000 urgent dental appointments promised by the Government alone will not improve the long-term oral health of the population.’
She added that further clarity was needed to understand how the government is to address dental deserts.
‘The ten-year health plan must commit to reforming the dentistry contract focusing on outcomes and incentivising prevention. The outdated Units of Dental Activity payment model should be overhauled,’ she said.
‘We need to be radical in reforming the current system and welcome the 2025/26 NHS Planning Guidance which emphasises improving access to dental care and committing to consulting on much-needed reforms to the dental contracts.’
Health minister Stephen Kinnock 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.
‘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.’
It comes after an urgent dental care appointment pilot was expanded in Sussex following the success of a programme at high-street dentists.
In November, a National Audit Office report found that the dental recovery plan was not on track to deliver a promised 1.5 million additional courses of NHS dental treatment this financial year.
| ICB | Additional Urgent care appts to be purchased |
| North East and North Cumbria ICB | 57,559 |
| Cheshire and Merseyside ICB | 46,617 |
| West Yorkshire ICB | 32,312 |
| Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB | 30,032 |
| Humber and North Yorkshire ICB | 27,196 |
| Sussex ICB | 26,546 |
| Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB | 24,360 |
| Devon ICB | 24,269 |
| Norfolk and Waveney ICB | 21,520 |
| Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB | 20,822 |
| Kent And Medway ICB | 20,319 |
| South Yorkshire ICB | 19,983 |
| Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire ICB | 19,076 |
| Greater Manchester ICB | 17,897 |
| Northamptonshire ICB | 17,826 |
| North East London ICB | 17,452 |
| Derby and Derbyshire ICB | 16,298 |
| Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICB | 16,190 |
| Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West ICB | 15,454 |
| Suffolk and North East Essex ICB | 15,413 |
| Black Country ICB | 14,473 |
| Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB | 14,195 |
| Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB | 13,990 |
| Dorset ICB | 13,569 |
| Somerset ICB | 13,498 |
| Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB | 12,970 |
| Lincolnshire ICB | 12,017 |
| Gloucestershire ICB | 11,464 |
| North West London ICB | 11,445 |
| Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly ICB | 10,910 |
| Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB | 10,137 |
| Birmingham and Solihull ICB | 9,005 |
| North Central London ICB | 8,976 |
| South East London ICB | 8,616 |
| Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin ICB | 7,408 |
| Frimley ICB | 6,626 |
| Surrey Heartlands ICB | 6,585 |
| South West London ICB | 6,402 |
| Mid and South Essex ICB | 6,098 |
| Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB | 6,041 |
| Hertfordshire and West Essex ICB | 5,712 |
| Coventry and Warwickshire ICB | 2,740 |
| Total | 700,018 |
