Health and Social Care

The Government estimate that training an individual dentist from the beginning of dental school through to graduation can cost up to approximately £292,000, of which costs in the region of £200,000 are not repayable by the student. We believe it is right and fair to seek better value for the significant investment that the taxpayer makes in the education and training of the dental workforce, and for graduate dentists to invest their skills and expertise in the NHS for the benefit of patients. This NHS experience will be of great benefit to them throughout their practice, as well as enabling better access for patients.

That is why we are today publishing a consultation on introducing a “tie-in” for graduate dentists. The introduction of a minimum NHS service requirement, or “tie-in”, would aim to ensure that newly qualified dentists spend at least some of their time delivering NHS dental care in the years following the completion of training. This may include working in a “high street” primary care dental practice, secondary care, community dentistry or dental public health.

The consultation will seek views on two main principles:

Newly qualified dentists should commit to delivering at least a minimum amount of NHS dental care, for a minimum number of years after graduating.

Newly qualified dentists should repay some of the public funding invested in their education and training if they do not deliver a minimum amount of NHS dental care.

The morale and wellbeing of our highly skilled and hard-working dental workforce is of utmost priority. I want to thank the many hard-working dentists for all their efforts as we have seen real improvements over the past year. We want to make NHS work more attractive to ensure NHS dentists are incentivised to deliver NHS care. As part of this, we have already announced a package of reforms to improve patient access and provide fairer remuneration for dentists. We are also supporting our excellent dental staff to work at the top of their training, and encouraging more hard-working dentists to those areas of England that are currently under-served. This is accompanied by detailed policy work on further reforms to the 2006 dental contract, in discussion with the profession, to properly reflect the care needed by different patients and more fairly remunerate practices. We want the outcome of this work to be better for patients and better for the workforce.

The publication of this consultation marks an important step in the delivery of both our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry and the NHS long term workforce plan. We aim to make dental services faster, simpler and fairer for patients and the dedicated dentistry workforce. I would encourage all those with an interest in the policy proposal, whether professionals, organisations or members of the public, to share their views and to shape our approach.

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