Police were called to tackle hundreds of people queuing outside a dentist in Bristol, who had flocked to the newly opened practice desperate for an NHS appointment.
The dentist, previously a Bupa dental centre, reopened on Monday morning under the name St Pauls Dental Practice. The St Pauls area of Bristol has been without a dentist for seven months after the branch closed last June.
Long lines could be seen outside the dentist when it opened around 10am. Police officers arrived on the scene around noon to check the line. Avon and Somerset Police said they had told those further back in the queue that they were unlikely to reach the front before the end of the day, but added that they had not asked anyone to leave.
Maria, 80, local resident, told Bristol Live: “The dentist has been closed for a while. I could not go to the other dentists – the appointments were fully booked, the waiting lists were too long.
‘One of my neighbors is having cancer surgery tomorrow. She’ll be in line somewhere. She is also disabled and cannot stand for very long, but she had no choice but to stand.”
The scenes illustrate the poor state of dental services in England. NHS statistics show that between April 2022 and March 2023, NHS hospitals in Bristol and Weston-super-Mare saw 775 patients with dental abscesses and 290 with tooth decay.
Across England, 83% of dental practices refused to accept adults as patients seeking NHS care, and 71.1% did not accept children under the age of 18, a Labor Party analysis found.
Preet Kaur Gill, the Shadow Minister for Primary Care and Health, said on X: “99% of dentists in the South West are not accepting new adult patients. Labor has a plan to save NHS dentistry: 700,000 extra urgent appointments, targeted recruitment in areas most in need and a targeted teeth-brushing program for three to five-year-olds.
The British Dental Association said fundamental reforms are needed to prevent similar situations in the future. X read: “Does the future of NHS dentistry mean police turning away desperate patients? If ministers think that a band-aid policy will solve this crisis, these scenes will repeat themselves. Nothing less than fundamental reforms can restore access to millions of people.”