Last week, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Health and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Dentistry & Oral Health jointly hosted an online discussion on how Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) will deliver the 700,000 extra urgent dental appointments. 

The discussion, chaired by Dr Simon Opher MP and Yasmin Qureshi MP, brought together leaders from ICBs to identify the different ways they will deliver the additional urgent appointments and what this announcement means for ICBs and patients in desperate need of dental care. 

We were delighted to be joined by an accomplished group of dental care practitioners, parliamentarians, and industry organisations to explore what a long-term solution for dental care would look like and how to pull NHS dentistry out of crisis. 

The session featured important presentations from: 

• Ian Holmes, Director of Strategy and Partnerships at West Yorkshire ICB, and Andrew Hobson, Deputy Director for Dental Commissioning for Yorkshire and Humber
• Dr Ed Garratt, CEO of Suffolk and North East Essex ICB
• Ben Squires, Director of Primary Care at Greater Manchester ICB, and Stuart Allan, Chair of the Greater Manchester Federation of Local Dental Committees
• Mark Green, BDA General Dental Practice Committee executive and urgent care dentist, Yorkshire 

Improving access to and delivery of dental care in the UK is an important part of the APHG’s work this year. The group is currently conducting an inquiry into ‘Access to Primary Care’. 

For more information on this area of work and the inquiry, please contact Jasmin Adebisi (jasmin.adebisi [at] policyconnect.org.uk (jasmin[dot]adebisi[at]policyconnect[dot]org[dot]uk)).