The British Dental Association (BDA) warn that the plans to boost dentist numbers represent an exercise in futility without first tackling the failed, underfunded systems driving practitioners out of the NHS.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, set to be published on June 30, 2023, is understood to state ambitions to train thousands more dentists by 2030.
The professional body stresses that the government has only brought forward minor tweaks to the discredited NHS contract fuelling retention problems, and with it, the access crisis facing millions across England. In the absence of change, dentist leaders say any gains in capacity risk being lost.
Over half (50.3 per cent) of high street dentists responding to recent BDA surveys reported having reduced NHS commitments since the start of the pandemic. Seventy-four per cent stated their intention to reduce - or further reduce – their NHS work. This movement is not being tracked by official data, which counts heads, rather than commitment, and gives dentists who do just one NHS check-up a year the same weight as an NHS full-timer.
The BDA has long advocated a fully funded workforce plan to address the ongoing crisis in the service.
Contrary to consistent claims made by the prime minister that the number of NHS dentists has bounced back, official figures secured by the BDA under freedom of information indicate just 23,577 dentists performed NHS work in the 2022/23 financial year, over 1,100 down on numbers pre-pandemic, a level not seen since 2012.
Eddie Crouch, British Dental Association chair, said, "This workforce plan is the government's latest attempt to fill a leaky bucket.
"Failed contracts and underfunding are fuelling an exodus from this service. There's little point training more dentists who don't want to work in the NHS."
The General Dental Council (GDC) has recently gone on the record stating that bringing in more dentists will not solve problems fuelled by broken contracts.
Lord Toby Harris, GDC chair, said at the Annual Conference of Local Dental Committees earlier in June, "Improving the throughput of those from overseas who want to be registered in this country is the right thing to be doing. But it is not some magic bullet that will solve the problems in NHS dentistry.
"If the contractual terms by which NHS services are provided are unattractive to many dentists currently on the register, then there is no reason why those same terms will be any more attractive to new registrants – whether they are from overseas or who qualify here.”
In May, the GDC tripled the number of places available for dentists wishing to take the Overseas Registration Exam (ORE) Part 1. There are currently around 1,500 candidates waiting to sit the exam.
While the BDA says it supports urgent action to deal with this huge backlog, it believes this change will not be a solution to the access crisis.