DENTISTS and NHS bosses have been questioned over the provision of NHS dentists in the area, with figures showing that over 40 per cent of people in Bradford do not have an NHS dentist.

The West Yorkshire joint health overview and scrutiny committee met in City Hall yesterday to look at access to dentists in the region.

The committee heard that the lack of available NHS dentists proved costly to the NHS, with people without dental care calling the 101 service or even visiting hospital emergency rooms to get treatment.

A survey by Healthwatch Bradford last year found that 43 of people in Bradford did not have an NHS dentist, and 30 per cent of parents told the group their children did not have a dentist.

Of the people without dentists, 74 per cent of people said they had tried but could not find a local dentist accepting NHS patients. Ten per cent of those who do not have routine NHS dental care have had to attend A&E because of dental pain.

Rory Deighton, from Healthwatch Kirklees, told the meeting one way of relieving pressure for NHS spaces could be to change the regularity at which patients were asked to go to their dentist for a check-up.

Currently patients are asked to return every six months for a check-up, with the average call-back being 7.8 months. But Mr Deighton said if patients with healthy teeth were only asked to come for a check-up every 12 months, it would save West Yorkshire dentists £6.83 million a year. He said: “I can’t think of anywhere else where people with the best health take priority over people with the poorest. If we just encouraged people to look after their own oral health more and visit the dentist for check-ups less than it would create more capacity in the system.”

When asked why there were so few NHS dentists available in more deprived areas where they were often needed most, Roger Furniss, vice-chairman of the Local Dental Council, said new contracts introduced in 2006 made it more challenging. He added: “It is very difficult. High-needs patients often have more costs associated with them.

“Under the current requirements, if you want to commit financial suicide then you open an NHS dentist in a high-needs area.”

He said income for NHS dental practices had fallen sharply, adding: “If that continues we won’t be talking about improving access to NHS services in the next few years, we’ll be talking about whether we still have them at all.”

The meeting heard that ten per cent of calls to Yorkshire Ambulance Service were from people who required access to dental services, and the service received 85,000 calls a year for this purpose. But they were told that many of these calls were at weekends or when dental surgeries were shut, so the figure was not totally down to people with no NHS access.