NHS dentist Sheffield: Patients wait months for appointments, travel for miles or go private due to shortage

A recent BBC investigation showed nine in 10 NHS dental practices are not accepting new adult patients.

Yorkshire and the Humber was one of the worst affected places, with 98 per cent of practices there not accepting new adult NHS patients, the BBC found.

We visited Sheffield city centre to ask people about their experience of finding a dentist and getting an appointment.

Most people we spoke to said they had struggled to find an NHS dentist and some said they had chosen to go private as a result.

Daniel Eshelby, aged 31, said: “I choose a private practice and I have to because (that meant) I wouldn’t have to wait for two years.”

Richard Maynard, 71, said: “I would have gone for the National Health Service but the service has been depleted that much and that was just a non-starter.

Health: Sheffield patients ‘left in pain and facing high bills’ due to lack of NHS dentist appointments

“I was fortunate that I can afford to pay privately, but I still find it’s quite expensive and hopefully I won’t have to go for a long time yet.”

John Dawson, also 71, said: “I am currently an NHS patient but I do know that my dentist stops taking people and my wife cannot get a dentist anywhere in the neighbourhood.”

‘I found it very difficult to get an NHS dentist’

Trish Gardners, 64, shared a similar experience. She said: “I found it very difficult to find an NHS dentist. I eventually found one, but after a six-month wait to get on there.”

Among the residents we interviewed, Martin Brannan is one of the luckiest, who does have a regular NHS dentist.

NHS: Sheffield dentist has 700 people on waiting list for NHS treatment, says Healthwatch Sheffield

The 56-year-old Uber driver is about to have a tooth implant next month.

He said: “I’ve got a regular dentist. But I have to travel a little bit because I live in Doncaster and my dentist is actually in Penistone. It’s a bit of a drive but it’s a fine one."

The Department of Health previously said it had made an extra £50m available ‘to help bust the Covid backlogs’ and that improving NHS access was a priority.

But according to the BBC’s investigation, not only was routine dental care difficult to access quickly in many places, most practices did not even have waiting lists.