Desperate patients were seen queuing in the cold for hours yesterday in the hope of getting an appointment with an NHS dentist.
Shocking images show the line outside of Saint Paul’s Dental Practice in Bristol spreading down the block, in scenes that industry leaders have compared to those in the former Soviet Union.
Dentists at the practice said some families had travelled hundreds of miles to take a spot in the queue.
Now, MailOnline’s map shows the extent of the NHS dental crisis in your area.
Queuing in Bristol started at 7am in the bitter cold and fog after the practice announced it would take the first 100 NHS patients after 1pm that day.
One of those waiting from the early hours was former soldier Indica Watson, 41, who said he hadn’t seen a dentist for over a decade.
‘The last time I saw a dentist I was in the army and every attempt since, maybe 70 to 80 times trying to get an NHS dentist, I’ve been told the same old thing which is they are just not taking on and you have to go private which is incredibly expensive,’ he told The Mirror.
‘I just think that Britain as whole, we’re better than this, we can be doing a lot better for the people of this country.’
Shocking images show the queue outside of Saint Paul’s Dental Practice in Bristol spreading down the block, in scenes that were compared to the former Soviet Union
Queuing in Bristol started at 7am in the bitter cold and fog after the practice announced it would take the first 100 people who attended as NHS patients after 1pm that day
Other hopefuls said they were trying to get their children, who had never seen an NHS dentist, registered whilst older patients claimed they had been forced to choose between bills or expensive private dentistry.
Staff at Saint Paul’s Dental Practice said they had about 14,000 patients currently on their books, but that 9,000 of these had come from outside the local area.
It comes amid a growing nationwide crisis, with the number of dentists in the UK dropping by 500 since 2019 whilst the population has grown 1.5million in the same time.
Principal dentist Gauri Pradhan said the situation couldn’t continue.
‘We are seeing people come from hundreds of miles away, taking their children out of school, using holiday days, just to register with us,’ she said.
‘We are seeing so many people who have terrible infections, life threatening sometimes, and they need to be referred to A&E immediately or children that have never seen a dentist since birth, it cannot go on like this.’
It’s the second time Saint Paul’s Dental Practice has seen such mammoth queues with the police having to be called to manage crowds last year when it announced it was taking on new NHS patients.
Responding to the scenes, Shawn Charlwood, chair of the British Dental Association’s general dental practice committee said: ‘We have a new Government, but it feels like more of the same for NHS dentistry.’
One of those waiting in the cold from the early hours was former soldier Indica Watson, 41, who said he hadn’t seen a dentist for over a decade
This chart shows the number of dentists who carried out NHS activity each year, the figure dropped sharply during the Covid pandemic but has slightly recovered to just over 24,000 according to the latest data
‘Wes Streeting says he wants to take the NHS ‘back to basics’. Ending scenes that belong outside bakeries in the Soviet bloc would be a good start.’
Data from last year analysed by MailOnline shows two thirds of patients in England have seen queues for NHS dentists worsen since Covid.
MailOnline’s map covering all 42 NHS districts found some of the worst-affected regions had 2,776 patients for every one NHS dentist.
Ratios have also soared by a fifth on pre-pandemic levels in some areas, piling huge pressure on overwhelmed practices that are already juggling thousands of patients on their books.
Some patients have been forced to pull out their own teeth with pliers or travel abroad — including to Ukraine — to see a dentist because of dire lack of NHS access.
Nationally, there was one NHS dentist for every 2,342 patients in 2023, on average.
But experts say the reality is much worse, with the crisis masked by statistics which only record dentist headcounts — not how much NHS work they perform.
In essence, it means that a dentist who saw one NHS patient the entire year counts just the same as one who sought no private work.
NHS Gloucestershire recorded one dentist per 2,399 patients in 2022/2023, up from 2,011 patients per dentist in 2018/2019.
It logged the biggest hike in the dentist-patient ratio out of the entire country (19.3 per cent).
But it is NHS Norfolk and Waveney that logged the largest disparity between dentist and patient numbers (one dentist for every 2,776 patients, a 17.1 per cent increase).
Seven of the 42 integrated care boards (ICBs) across England saw rates increase by at least 10 per cent.
Only 14 ICBs saw their ratio shrink, MailOnline found.
NHS Frimley saw its ratio plunge 13 per cent in four years, to 1,358 patients per one dentist in 2022/2023, suggesting people in this area have the easiest access to dentists.
Last year hundreds of desperate people — including children and the elderly — were pictured queuing outside St Paul’s Dental Practice in Bristol after it opened its doors to new patients
Police were even forced to turn some patients away. Pictured, patients outside St Pauls Dental Practice last year
But, after two full days of snaking lines, prospective patients were met with a sign on the door that said: ‘We are not enrolling anymore patients.’ Pictured, the sign outside St Pauls Dental Practice last year
NHS Birmingham and Solihull also recorded one dentist per 1,804 patients, a 10 per cent reduction in ratio size.
The crisis in NHS dentistry has been brewing for years, with the UK now among the poorest performers for dentists per head of population in Europe.
Figures also show roughly 26million adults haven’t had a check-up in the last two years, about 60 per cent of the population.
This is one of the lowest proportions since modern records start in 2006 when over half of adults were able to get appointments.
NHS dentistry has been in crisis for years, with leaders claiming the sector has been chronically underfunded, making it financially unviable to carry out treatments.
Exacerbating the problem is that, as more dentists leave the NHS, those that remain become swamped by more and more patients.
