Photos show long line at NHS dentist – are dental appointments easy to get in your area?

Desperate patients were seen queuing in the cold for hours yesterday in the hope of getting an appointment with an NHS dentist.

Startling photographs reveal a long line outside Saint Paul’s Dental Practice in Bristol stretching along the block, a situation that experts in the field have likened to scenes from the former Soviet Union.

Dentists at the practice said some families had travelled hundreds of miles to take a spot in the queue.

Now, MailOnline’s map shows the extent of the NHS dental crisis in your area. 

Residents in Bristol began queuing at 7 am in the cold and fog after the practice announced that they would be accepting the first 100 NHS patients starting at 1 pm that day.

One of those waiting from the early hours was former soldier Indica Watson, 41, who said he hadn’t seen a dentist for over a decade. 

“The last time I visited a dentist was when I was in the army, and ever since then, after around 70 to 80 unsuccessful attempts to find an NHS dentist, I’ve constantly been met with the same response that they are not taking on any new patients and that I would need to opt for private treatment, which is extremely costly,” he explained to The Mirror.

‘I just think that Britain as whole, we’re better than this, we can be doing a lot better for the people of this country.’ 

Shocking images show the queue outside of Saint Paul’s Dental Practice in Bristol spreading down the block, in scenes that were compared to the former Soviet Union

Queuing in Bristol started at 7am in the bitter cold and fog after the practice announced it would take the first 100 people who attended as NHS patients after 1pm that day

Other hopefuls said they were trying to get their children, who had never seen an NHS dentist, registered whilst older patients claimed they had been forced to choose between bills or expensive private dentistry. 

Staff at Saint Paul’s Dental Practice said they had about 14,000 patients currently on their books, but that 9,000 of these had come from outside the local area. 

It comes amid a growing nationwide crisis, with the number of dentists in the UK dropping by 500 since 2019 whilst the population has grown 1.5million in the same time. 

Principal dentist Gauri Pradhan said the situation couldn’t continue.

‘We are seeing people come from hundreds of miles away, taking their children out of school, using holiday days, just to register with us,’ she said. 

‘We are seeing so many people who have terrible infections, life threatening sometimes, and they need to be referred to A&E immediately or children that have never seen a dentist since birth, it cannot go on like this.’

It’s the second time Saint Paul’s Dental Practice has seen such mammoth queues with the police having to be called to manage crowds last year when it announced it was taking on new NHS patients. 

Responding to the scenes, Shawn Charlwood, chair of the British Dental Association’s general dental practice committee said: ‘We have a new Government, but it feels like more of the same for NHS dentistry.’

One of those waiting in the cold from the early hours was former soldier Indica Watson, 41, who said he hadn’t seen a dentist for over a decade

This chart shows the number of dentists who carried out NHS activity each year, the figure dropped sharply during the Covid pandemic but has slightly recovered to just over 24,000 according to the latest data

‘Wes Streeting says he wants to take the NHS ‘back to basics’. Ending scenes that belong outside bakeries in the Soviet bloc would be a good start.’ 

Data from last year analysed by MailOnline shows two thirds of patients in England have seen queues for NHS dentists worsen since Covid.

MailOnline’s map covering all 42 NHS districts found some of the worst-affected regions had over 3,100 patients for every one NHS dentist.

Ratios have also soared by a fifth on pre-pandemic levels in some areas, piling huge pressure on overwhelmed practices that are already juggling thousands of patients on their books. 

Some patients have been forced to pull out their own teeth with pliers or travel abroad — including to Ukraine — to see a dentist because of dire lack of NHS access.

Nationally, there was one NHS dentist for every 2,385 patients in 2023, on average. 

NHS Norfolk and Waveney recorded 3,177 patients per dentist in 2023/24 the highest ratio in England.

This was a 30 per cent increase from 2,432 patients per dentists the area recorded in 2019/20. 

NHS Lincolnshire recorded the next highest with 2,702 patients per dentist, an increase of 13 per cent from 2,379 patients five years prior. 

Coming third was NHS Northamptonshire with 2,677 patients per dentist an increase of nearly 600 (a rise of 28.7 per cent) compared to 2019/20.

Overall, 18 of the 42 NHS areas in England saw a rise in the number of patients to dentists of at least 10 per cent.

Only 10 areas saw their rate improve compared to figures five years ago.

NHS North West London had the easiest access to dentists in the country with only 1,483 patients per dentist. 

The crisis in NHS dentistry has been brewing for years, with the UK now among the poorest performers for dentists per head of population in Europe. 

Latest figures suggest roughly 27million adults haven’t had a check-up in the last two years, about 60 per cent of the population.

This is one of the lowest proportions since modern records start in 2006 when over half of adults were able to get appointments. 

NHS dentistry has been in crisis for years, with leaders claiming the sector has been chronically underfunded, making it financially unviable to carry out treatments.

Exacerbating the problem is that, as more dentists leave the NHS, those that remain become swamped by more and more patients.