Police were called to manage hundreds of people lined up outside a dentist in Bristol, who had flocked to the newly opened practice desperate to secure an NHS appointment.
The dentist, which was formerly a Bupa dental centre, reopened under the name St Pauls dental practice on Monday morning. The St Pauls area in Bristol has been without a dentist for seven months after the site closed last June.
Long queues could be seen outside the dentist when it opened at about 10am. Just before noon, police officers arrived on the scene to control the line. Avon and Somerset police said they had told those who were further back in the queue that they were unlikely to reach the front before the end of the day but added they did not ask anyone to leave.
Maria, 80, a local resident, told Bristol Live: “The dentist has been closed for some time. I couldn’t get into any of the other dentists – the appointments were fully booked, the waiting lists were too long.
“One of my neighbours – she’s facing an operation for cancer tomorrow. She’ll be somewhere in the queue. She’s also disabled and can’t stand for very long, but she’s had no choice but to stand.”
The scenes illustrate the poor state of dental services in England. NHS statistics show that between April 2022 and March 2023, NHS hospitals in Bristol and Weston-super-Mare saw 775 patients with dental abscesses and 290 with tooth decay.
Across England, 83% of dental surgeries were refusing to accept adults as patients seeking NHS care and 71.1% were not accepting under-18s, analysis by the Labour party found.
Preet Kaur Gill, the shadow minister for primary care and public health, said on X: “99% of dentists across the south-west aren’t accepting any new adult patients. Labour has a plan to rescue NHS dentistry: 700,000 extra urgent appointments, targeted recruitment to areas most in need and targeted toothbrushing scheme for three- to five-year-olds.”
The British Dental Association said fundamental reform was needed to prevent similar situations happening in the future. It said on X: “Does the future of NHS dentistry involve the police turning away desperate patients? If ministers think sticking-plaster policies will solve this crisis, then these scenes will be repeated. Nothing short of fundamental reform can restore access to millions.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are making progress to boost NHS dental services, with 23% more treatments delivered last year compared to the previous year, and 1.7 million extra adults and 800,000 more children receiving NHS dental care.
“We back NHS dentistry with £3 billion of funding every year, and recently announced plans to increase dental training places by 40% as part of the NHS Long-Term Workforce Plan.
“Further measures to improve access and increase the number of NHS dentists through our dental recovery plan will be set out shortly.”
