The Scottish Executive has a number of recruitment and retention measures in place aimed at improving access to dentists in rural areas and across the north east of Scotland. These include:grants under the Scottish Dental Access Initiative for dentists willing to set up or expand NHS practices in areas of poor access or high oral health need; the approval of salaried dentists, where an NHS board or Primary Care NHS Trust considers that the existing provision is insufficient to meet the demands of the local population and no independent general dental practitioner is available to fill the gap; a £1 million "golden hello" package, which includes payments to vocational trainees taking up vocational training in designated areas and payments to dentists who enter substantive general dental service practice within three months of completion of training; a £3 million package of recruitment and retention measures, which includes the introduction of commitment payments for assistants and the raising of the earnings ceiling for seniority payments, both of which reward dentists for undertaking more NHS treatment, anda rural practice allowance unique to Scotland is available to the remotest practices and was increased on 1 April 2003 to £3,000 per practice.In addition, the Scottish Executive has made a commitment through A Partnership for a Better a Scotland to expand the capability of dental training facilities in Scotland by increasing the student outreach capacity in the north-east.