Gargrave'S NHS dental surgery may close if a deal is not agreed between the dentist and the Primary Care Trust.

Local residents are furious that their local service may be lost because it says targets set by the NHS are impossible to achieve.

They have collected hundreds of signatures and presented the petition to the chief executive of Craven, Harrogate and Rural District Primary Care Trust (Chard PCT), the body which is responsible for agreeing new NHS contracts with dentists and has to follow strict national guidelines concerning productivity.

The deadline for the contract negotiations ends this week and if the situation is unresolved the dental surgery in Gargrave may go private. Local residents and the dentist himself all want it to remain an NHS facility.

The Gargrave surgery has one practising dentist who operates three days a week. For two days of the week he works in Settle. He has been told he must increase his units of dental activity (UDA) from 36 a week to the required amount of 42, or the surgery will close.

Gargrave dentist David Jackson has given 18 years service to the NHS and said it was impossible to complete his quota unless he worked well into the evening.

He said the system that calculates how much UDA each dentist should complete was totally flawed and an inaccurate representation of how much work had actually been done.

Mr Jackson said: "The way they calculate the number of UDAs is not based on the amount of work done but on how many forms were submitted in the previous year."

"I have tried very hard to get a contract that I can actually complete. I have failed miserably," he added

A spokesman for Chard said: "The PCT has had extensive discussions with Mr Jackson regarding the offer made by us under the terms of the new dental contract. It is important to stress that contract values are calculated based on a nationally-decided formula, and both the PCT and practices have to follow agreed guidelines.

"We can understand why patients of the practice are concerned and we hope the practice will remain within the NHS."

Mr Jackson said no allowances had been made because the Gargrave surgery had just one dentist and subsequently had higher overhead costs.

Margaret I'Anson of Kirkby Malham, who is registered at the Gargrave surgery, said 220 signatures had been collected from concerned patients around the Dales.

Mrs I'Anson added: "I find it incredible they have got somebody who is a good dentist and they are not prepared to keep him here. He has been in the NHS a long time. Just to turn around and change the goalposts for some nebulous reason I think is disgraceful.

"Nobody knew about this possible closure. People feel very strongly about it," she added.

* The PCT said that nine of Craven's 10 remaining NHS dental practices had signed the new contract.