The scramble for a mere 20 places at an NHS dentist in Warrington, Cheshire this week was the latest sign of the breakdown of dentistry across England and Wales. In particular, the desperate scenes highlighted the failure of the service to provide spaces for new patients to register, especially if they move to a new area.

In the same week, the British Dental Association (BDA) said NHS dentistry has “effectively ceased to exist” for new patients, commenting on a new report from the Office of National Statistics that estimates 97 per cent of new patients are unable to register, with either no places available or waiting times stretching so long – often several years – that they are effectively meaningless.

Amid this crisis, there are those who will go to extraordinary lengths to access an NHS dentist, even if that means travelling to the opposite end of the country and maintaining registrations in locations in which they no longer live.

“I had an NHS dentist in London for 10 years and that was fine,” says Siobhan*, 37. “But four years ago I moved to Gloucestershire, and there are no practices taking new patients. So I have to make a four-hour round trip to London and back to go to the dentist, as I did last week when I cracked my tooth.

“I stayed registered in London because I couldn’t find a single dentist [in Gloucestershire] that even had an open list. It wasn’t that the waiting time was long – I contacted a dozen and every dentist I could find within 45 minutes of us had closed their lists. I tried this two years ago, and I tried again recently because I have a child, and all the dentists said the same thing, even for a toddler.”

There are 11,891 dental practices in the UK in 2024 and last year a report by the Nuffield Trust think tank declared: “NHS dentistry in England is at its most perilous point in its 75-year history.”

The new figures suggest the situation is becoming even worse given that only last December a report commissioned by the Labour Party found 82 per cent of all dental practices in England are not registering new adult NHS patients, while 71 per cent are not taking on new patients under the age of 18. By region the figures appear even more stark: more than 99 per cent of practices in South West England are not accepting adults to their registers and in the North East the figure stands at almost 97 per cent.