MP Vikki Slade has raised concerns that the funding, which was either underspent or reallocated, could have been used to increase dental appointments and address the growing need for urgent care across the county.
Mrs Slade said: “It does not seem unreasonable to spend the money allocated for dental services on our teeth and gums and it must be possible to withdraw funds from dentists who have no intention of providing NHS care much earlier so that others can pick up their patients.”
The MP has criticised the current NHS dental contract and the lack of protected funding, which has been described as a key factor behind Dorset’s ongoing dental access crisis.
She explained that dentists are allocated a set number of units of dental activity (UDAs) each year and cannot carry out additional NHS work once those are used up.
Some dentists, she said, have held onto UDAs throughout the year before returning them late, making it impossible for others to use the funding to treat patients in need.
Mrs Slade said: “Some dentists who prefer to do private work have been sitting on those UDAs, using them like an interest-free loan, and then passing them back to NHS Dorset late in the year, too late for other dental practices to use them, leaving people in pain.”
The financial structure is also causing dentists to subsidise NHS care, as many treatments are reimbursed below the actual cost of delivery.
Since 2020, 44 dentists in Dorset have handed back their NHS contracts, with none replaced to date.
This shortfall has contributed to a rise in hospital admissions among children aged five to 10 for dental procedures, which more than doubled from 12,702 in 2020-21 to 27,748 in 2024-25.
Mrs Slade has been in discussions with NHS Dorset and has launched a petition calling for full dental budgets to be spent exclusively on dental services.
She plans to present the petition in Parliament in the coming weeks to highlight the scale of the problem to the new dental services minister.