{"id":388068,"date":"2026-01-24T13:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T13:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/388068\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T13:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T13:57:08","slug":"call-for-chilton-to-have-better-access-to-nhs-dentistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/388068\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for Chilton to have better access to NHS dentistry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">People throughout the region have gone years without a dental appointment due to a significant backlog of appointments, huge waiting lists, and not enough practices, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/lnp\/ldrs\/\" class=\"ssrcss-6mgqu7-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reports the Local Democracy Reporting Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The ICB said issues affecting dentistry included difficulties recruiting and training dentists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Many dentists also report &#8220;struggling to afford the cost of delivering NHS services&#8221;, the spokesman said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Some of the challenges faced by NHS dentistry require fundamental reforms to the dental contract,&#8221; they said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They added government measures to improve NHS dentistry were coming in in April, with a focus on urgent care and complex needs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The ICB said: &#8220;We have recently invested \u00a39.5 million on a new model of care to ensure people can manage urgent dental issues safely. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This includes bringing online a network of 23 Urgent Dental Access Centres (UDACs) that will provide over 100,000 urgent dental appointments every year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">New UDACs opened in Durham City, Barnard Castle and Peterlee last year, providing in-hours urgent dental care for patients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People throughout the region have gone years without a dental appointment due to a significant backlog of appointments,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-388068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}