Yahoo News Update on Plymouth's new dental clinic as waiting lists skyrocket
The site of Plymouth’s new £4m NHS dental practice is to be revealed soon, the city council said. The location of the new clinic, aimed to provide up to 3,500 appointments a year from late 2025, has not yet been revealed but it will be in “in a council-owned key city centre location”.
Plymouth City Council has worked closely with the University of Plymouth’s Peninsula Dental Social Enterprise (PDSE) to help find an accessible and appropriate location for the practice, where clinicians will provide much-needed access to dental care.
Urgent treatment will be delivered via an innovative combination of qualified dentists and undergraduate students on placement from the University of Plymouth’s Peninsula Dental School, along with new postgraduate training opportunities to help retain dental professionals in the city and South West region.
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The project has been driven forward with support from the Plymouth Dental Taskforce, set up as soon as the council’s Labour administration took control in May last year.
The unit is planned to have 16 dental chairs and is scheduled to open in September 2025. The new practice will be paid for by PDSE and, in addition to providing vital NHS care for some of the 22,000 people on a waiting list for an NHS dentist, will also help regenerate the city centre, being housed in a currently unused building.
Cllr Mary Aspinall, cabinet member for health and adult social care and chair of the Taskforce, said: “It’s brilliant to see this project moving forward. Helping residents to access NHS dental treatment has been one of our key priorities.
“As a council, we’ve been working closely with PDSE to help make this a reality for a number of years. This has included lobbying for NHS funding through the Dental Taskforce and helping to find a suitable city centre location. Once open, this new dental practice will make a huge difference by ensuring thousands more people living in the city can access the NHS dental care that they deserve.”
The Plymouth Dental Taskforce was created in 2023 to address the growing dental crisis in the city. The group includes representatives from Plymouth City Council, NHS Devon, Peninsula Dental Social Enterprise (PDSE), Livewell Southwest, MPs and University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust.
With more than 22,000 Plymouth residents currently on the waiting list for an NHS dentist, the Taskforce has agreed to focus on three key priorities, the first of which was to help deliver a new PDSE dental facility in the city centre.
The Taskforce will also focus on obtaining additional funding to enhance preventative measures that help to protect residents’ oral health, and using the annual NHS dental underspend to commission new services for people with the highest needs.
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