Campaign to boost dental student numbers in Plymouth fails

Government wants more dental schools instead

A campaign to get more dentists trained in Plymouth has failed.

The government has rejected a plea by the city’s three MPs and Plymouth City Council for a 25 per cent increase in students at the Peninsula Dental School.

The school, part of Plymouth University, accepts 58 students each year but has capacity for 72.

Additional educational funding would benefit the future dental workforce and allow further access to treatment for patients, said the university.

Plymouth has more than 20,000 people on a waiting list to see an NHS dentist and the shortage of dentists is reflected across Devon.

At a meeting of Plymouth City Council’s health and adult social care scrutiny panel on Wednesday, Cllr Mary Aspinall (Lab, Sutton and Mount Gould) who was instrumental in setting up a council-led dental task force for the city, said she had seen a letter to say there would be no extra places for students in Plymouth.

The government was instead looking at having more dental schools in the country.

“I am not happy about that at all,” she said and added that the council should put pressure on the government to add something in the contract that persuades students to stay in Plymouth for a year once they graduated.

“We have to think how we keep people here. We can’t stop them going up the A38,  let’s make Plymouth a great place to stay in.”

Recruitment and retention will be a key focus for the task force going forward.

The group, made up of local authority members, the dental school and health professionals, secured “substantial investment” from NHS Devon for oral health education in schools reaching thousands of children in the most disadvantaged areas and has helped people experiencing homelessness to see a dentist by using a proportion of Plymouth’s annual NHS dental underspend.

This year it will improve access for children currently not seeing a dentist and older adults receiving care.

The meeting was told that the government’s “golden hello” scheme – which offers £20,000 to dentists to relocate to areas that have struggled to recruit and retain those who might otherwise go to private practice, had not been that successful in Devon.

This week it was revealed that a new £5 million educational practice to treat dental emergencies in Plymouth City Centre has seen nearly 1,000 NHS patients in its first month. The clinic is run by the University of Plymouth through its Peninsula Dental Social Enterprise.