To ask the Scottish Government how many NHS board areas currently have fewer than one NHS dentist per 1,000 people, and what measures it is taking to address any reported shortages.
Typically an experienced primary care dentist seeing mainly NHS patients will have a list of around 2,000 – 2,500 patients. While the total number of dentists includes those in Public and Hospital Dental Service settings, published figures indicate that there are no Board areas with less than 1 dentist per 2,000 of population.
As at 31 March 2025, there are 59.2 primary care dentists per 100,000 of the Scottish population, compared to 56.8 at 31 March 2024. This equates to 0.6 dentists per 1000 patients.
The Scottish Government introduced payment reform changes from 1 November 2023 which has been well received by the profession. This is the main intervention designed to ensure dentists continue to be incentivised to both remain and increase their NHS provision.
Workforce:
2.Payment reform was introduced in November ’23 reducing treatment items from 700 to 45, with almost 4 million courses of treatment delivered between November 2023 and September 2024.
3.A second stage of reform will focus on workforce. Under the First Minister’s NHS Renewal priorities for 25-26 student intake to the Bachelor of Dental Surgery/BDS courses at Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow universities will increase by 7%; a new training scheme will support overseas-qualified dentists, who are GDC-registered as dental therapists, to convert to full dentist status at a cost of £1.5M and redesign of a rural incentive scheme funded via the GDS budget.
4.I will continue to lead on renewing four-nation discussions on Provisional Registration, which would allow overseas-qualified dentists to enter the UK NHS workforce immediately while awaiting qualification.
5.The Scottish Government is addressing building capacity, by adopting a multi-disciplinary team approach, giving patients direct access to care via dental care professional (i.e. hygienists, therapists, dental nurses).
6.We continue to offer financial support through the recently revised Scottish Dental Access Initiative and Recruitment and Retention Allowance, supporting NHS dental provision in designated geographic areas to address unmet patient need.
7.The Programme for Government sets out a package of actions to improve the NHS dental workforce now and into the future, and is supported by new funding in 2025-26.
8.We will support the dental workforce pipeline through both the immediate expansion of domestic dental student numbers and the development of an innovative new training package to support international dentists in joining the NHS Scotland workforce.
9.Alongside this, we are also working with NHS Boards to refine the financial incentives in place to support dentists moving to work in rural areas, supporting sustainable access across Scotland.
