People from across the country descended on Bristol today, and formed another long queue to sign up for an NHS dentist in scenes the dentist herself described as ‘desperate’.
To mark the first anniversary of the opening of a new NHS dentist in St Pauls, the dentists practice decided to accept another 100 NHS patients – and word soon got around. In similar scenes to last February, when hundreds queued around the block for several days in a row to sign on with the new NHS dentists, there were people queuing along Ashley Road once again.
Principal dentist Gauri Pradhan told Bristol Live said the scenes showed the ‘total neglect’ of dentistry by the Government and the NHS, and that the need was still there for thousands more NHS dentist spaces in Bristol and across the country.
This time last year, the new St Pauls dentist practice opened and the first few days of operations saw scenes that made national headlines and came to be a defining image in the run-up to the 2024 General Election.
The new dentist was located in one of 85 dentists across the country that were closed down by BUPA in early 2023, with the private healthcare company saying there were ‘systemic challenges’ in the way the NHS dentistry provision was funded. In St Pauls, local people got together to launch a campaign to prevent the closure, and then when it did close, they campaigned for it to reopen.
They were successful in persuading the local Integrated Care Board to sanction its reopening – and it was the only one of the 85 BUPA dentist centres to reopen, according to the Save St Pauls Dentist Campaign.
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In the first week of February, the dentists opened its doors to new NHS patients – former patients of the BUPA site had to re-register – and that triggered queues for hours, and the scenes were visited by Wes Streeting, who was then the Shadow Health Secretary.
A year on, Mr Streeting is Labour ’s first health secretary in Government for 14 years, and the opening up of another 100 spaces, has brought queues back to Ashley Road again.
“It’s not as bad as last year,” said operations manager Shivani Bhandari, looking at the length of the queue. “I don’t know, after 100 people, what we will say to these people, because we can only accommodate 100 but I can see there’s more than 100 outside. So we can’t help them, we’re just a small practice. We can’t solve the problem, but we are here to help,” she added.
Gauri Pradhan, the principal dentist at the practice, said: “It’s desperate. The queue is not as large, but you can see the need is evidently still there. It’s total neglect.
“We’re excited to help this many people. Ideally we wouldn’t want any queue, we would want it seamless, but you can’t control the people. There is a lot of demand. We have had patients come from various areas of the United Kingdom, from Wales, from Torquay, from Cornwall, and some patients are from this postcode but many of them are from different postcodes, just to access NHS care,” she added.
Another change in St Pauls in the past 12 months has been a new MP – the Green Party’s Carla Denyer represents Ashley Road now, and said things ‘haven’t got better’.
“The astonishing scenes we saw outside St Pauls dental practice in Bristol this time last year were a testament to how broken NHS dentistry is, and a year later things haven’t got better,” she said. “Government data out last month showed that 94 per cent of new patients who try to access NHS care fail to secure it – meaning that for new patients, NHS dentistry has essentially ceased to exist.
“Dentistry is meant to be a core part of our NHS. A pain-free life should not be reserved for those who have the money to pay for private health and dental care. But Labour hasn’t made any progress towards their pledges on dentistry, leaving millions without the care they need. In fact if anything it’s got worse.
“The Government’s increase in Employers’ National Insurance could hit dentists, who it seems may not be reimbursed for the extra running costs, despite providing public healthcare services. Dentists were handed a real terms pay cut last month after a record-breaking delay. And Labour still hasn’t fixed the root cause of the problem, which is that the NHS dental contracts do not cover the cost of doing the work for some types of treatment, so dentists are treating patients at a loss,” she added.
“Until the government fixes these issues, it’ll be no surprise that people in Bristol and elsewhere will continue to struggle to find a dentist taking NHS patients,” she said.
Now the health secretary, Wes Streeting said he was trying to fix NHS dentistry, but it was a massive challenge after 14 years of Conservative austerity. In his most recent update to MPs about the state of NHS dentistry, just last month, Mr Streeting said NHS dentistry was ‘at death’s door’, but he had a plan to roll out an extra 700,000 urgent dental appointments.
“Today there are 1,399 fewer full-time equivalent GPs than in 2015, and NHS dentistry is at death’s door,” he told the Commons. “This Government will fix the front door to the NHS. We’ve announced an additional £889 million in funding for general practice in 2025-26, the biggest boost in years, and started hiring an extra 1,000 GPs to the front line already.
“And our 10-year health plan will shift the focus of healthcare out of hospital into the community. We are looking at two things, firstly, making sure we deliver what we said in our manifesto including the 700,000 urgent appointments, and we’re determined to deliver those as fast as we can.
“The minister for care (Stephen Kinnock) is having discussions with the BDA (British Dental Association) to that effect.
“He is also looking very closely, as am I, at the money that is already going into NHS dentistry, how that money could be better spent, and why it is that year after year, despite people’s teeth rotting to the extent that they’re having to pull them out themselves, or children are attending A&E to have their teeth pulled out, how it is that year after year we saw consistent underspends in the dentistry budget under our predecessors?” he added.
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