The Government has announced the allocation of 50 new dental school places in the south and east of England as part of efforts to improve access to NHS dentistry in underserved areas.
The Office for Students has awarded 25 undergraduate dentistry places each to the University of Portsmouth and the University of East Anglia, both of which will offer dentistry programmes for the first time from 2027.
Tom Whiting, chief executive and registrar at the General Dental Council, said: ‘We are pleased to have supported the University of Portsmouth and the University of East Anglia to achieve dental authority status, and we will continue to do so, making sure both programmes deliver high-quality training and that every graduate is ready to practise at graduation.’
The allocation means every NHS England region will now have a dental school, with the new places targeting so-called 'dental deserts' in rural and coastal communities where access to NHS dental care has remained a longstanding challenge.
Health minister Stephen Kinnock said: 'By bringing dental school places to the University of East Anglia and the University of Portsmouth for the first time, trainee dentists will put down roots in parts of the country that have for too long been left behind.
'These new places will help train NHS-ready dentists in the communities that need them most, meaning patients can get the care they need faster and closer to home.'
However, the British Dental Association (BDA) said the additional places were unlikely to resolve access problems on their own, and argued that wider reform would be needed to retain dentists within NHS practice.
The BDA noted that the 50 new places were on track to represent less than 2% of new registrants, and pointed to the example of Peninsula Dental School in Plymouth, which currently offers 58 places but, according to the association, has ‘done little to take the edge off the south west's chronic access issues’.
BDA chair Dr Eddie Crouch said: 'New dental schools are a step forward but are no silver bullet for ending dental deserts.
'Keeping even this tiny number of new graduates in the NHS hinges on making the service a place dentists would choose to build a career. That means real reform, wedded to sustainable funding.'
According to the BDA, unmet need for NHS dental care in England currently stands at almost 14 million adults, equivalent to more than one in four of the adult population.
The Government said it had delivered 1.8 million additional courses of NHS dental treatment since coming into office, almost half of which went to children.
The Association of Dental Groups (ADG) welcomed the government’s strategy of focusing on training dentists in specific ‘dental desert’ areas such as Portsmouth and East Anglia.
Neil Carmichael, ADG executive chair, said: ‘This is a practical and targeted approach to tackle the workforce issue where it is most acute.’
The allocation of the new training places forms part of a wider package of measures aimed at increasing workforce capacity, including an expansion of professional registration examination places for overseas-qualified dentists, and ongoing reforms to the NHS dental contract.
The government said up to 2,400 additional overseas-trained dentists could join the register annually by 2028-29.