Nearly 4.5m children have not been seen by an NHS dentist in a year

Over 4.4m children in England have not been seen by an NHS dentist for at least a year, shocking new figures published by the Liberal Democrats have revealed.

The research, commissioned from the House of Commons Library, estimates the number of children who weren’t seen by an NHS dentist in the year to June 2023, based on the latest data from the health service.

This includes nearly one million children in the East of England alone, meaning half of all children in the region have not seen a dentist in the past 12 months. Across the country, almost two in five (38.7 per cent) of children haven’t seen a dentist in the last year.

In Norfolk and Waveney, over one in two (55 per cent) of children hadn’t seen an NHS dentist in the past year, more than anywhere else in the country. Other areas with the most children who hadn’t seen an NHS dentist include South West London (52.5 per cent), Devon (49.2 per cent) and Northamptonshire (49.1 per cent).