I have now had an update from the Integrated Care Board after contacting them regarding Verne Road Dental Practice in North Shields.

I am told that over the last few months the ICB dental team have been in contact with the providers of dental services at Verne Road Dental Practice to discuss their NHS contract, most recently in June 2025.

Since that time, the ICB has not received any further communications from the practice and were surprised to learn that the practice had contacted its NHS patients to notify them that they would no longer be able to access NHS treatment at the practice.

The ICB dental team has contacted one of the partners at Verne Road Dental Practice, who has confirmed that Verne Road Dental Practice does not intend to hand back their NHS contract at this stage. However, the practice has had three associate dental practitioners leave the practice in the last eight weeks, and as a result the practice has taken the difficult decision to focus its remaining NHS capacity on children, vulnerable adults and urgent care.

The ICB have assured me they understand the anxiety and confusion that this decision has caused to patients of Verne Road Dental Practice. Locally the ICB is working at pace to make it easier to get a routine dental appointment.

They are:

• Increasing the rate paid to dentists to deliver NHS dental care.

• Offering dental practices the opportunity to be paid to deliver more than their contracted level of activity.

• Making funding available to support practices in our most deprived communities or in areas where NHS services have been lost.

• Working with local dental networks and committees and NHS England Regional Workforce Training and Education Directorate to stabilise, upskill and grow the dental workforce.

• Increasing the number of urgent care appointments available from dental practices.

• Providing more urgent out-of-hours appointments.

• Providing additional dental clinical assessment workforce and triage capacity within the NHS 111 service.

•Building a network of Urgent Dental Access Centres to treat patients with the greatest clinical needs.

• Increasing specialist orthodontic and oral surgery capacity where required to help patients access the services they need quicker.

What this means for North Tyneside

• 20 contracts to deliver general dental services and 359,937 units of dental activity (UDAs)

• Community dental services providing care for vulnerable and medically compromised patients delivered by Northumberland Healthcare NHS Trust

• A 111 emergency out-of-hours service covering North Tyneside, provided by Newcastle Upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust delivered from Royal Victoria  Infirmary and Molyneux Street NHS Centre in Byker

• An Urgent Dental Access Centre in North Shields which will provide 14 unscheduled urgent appointments every day.

• Eight practices commissioned to deliver 4,362 additional urgent care appointments for those with the greatest clinical needs between April and September 2025.

• Funding to support local authorities deliver supervised toothbrushing schemes in schools to tackle tooth decay and instil good oral health habits in children.

The ICB have asked me to pass on the information below about finding an NHS dentist.

Patients who have been affected by Verne Road Dental Practice’s decision can find details of local NHS dentists at: https://nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-dentist

This list will show which practices have appointments available for new patients.

There are some important things to know about making an appointment for routine dental care:

• Patients can ask for an appointment at any NHS dentist.

• Patients do not have to use the practice closest to them or the one they have

used before.

• Patients do not have to register with a dentist in the same way they do with a GP

Patients with urgent care needs should contact an NHS dentist first. They provide urgent care appointments during their normal working hours.

We have commissioned additional urgent care appointments from dentists across the region for patients with high clinical needs. This is a short-term scheme that runs to September 2025 to provide additional urgent care capacity while we roll out our network of Urgent Dental Access Centres across the North East and North Cumbria.

A list of the practices taking part in the scheme can be viewed online using the link below. Patients can contact any of the practices listed to ask for an appointment. The number of urgent and high needs appointments available at each practice will vary across the days and week, so we cannot guarantee an appointment will always be available.

If a patient cannot find an urgent appointment with an NHS dentist, they can visit 111.nhs.uk or call 111. If the patient does need urgent help, the NHS 111 health advisor may be able to find an appointment for them at an urgent in-hours or out-of hours treatment service.

More information about how to get routine or urgent dental care is available on our website at https://northeastnorthcumbria.nhs.uk/here-to-help-you/nhs-dentistry

The Government is taking action to deliver an additional 700,000 urgent dental appointments per year and ICB’s started to deliver those appointments from April.  We are committed to reforming the dental contract but it must work in the interests of patients.

I do recognise that the actions of Verne Road Dental Practice will impact patients and it will take time for the ICB to mitigate these effects.  Please be assured I will closely monitor progress in our local area and will endeavour to update you as and when I receive further developments.