DIY Dentists - Mid Sussex residents are finding it impossible to register with an NHS dentist.

Shocking results from our autumn survey reveal Mid Sussex residents are struggling to pay for dental care and even resorting to doing their own dentistry due to a lack of NHS dentists.

Thank you to the hundreds of people who completed our Lib Dem healthcare survey last autumn. The results made for sobering reading, with 40% of you experiencing delays in accessing NHS treatment. 

It was clear from the survey that signing up with an NHS dentist is almost impossible. We’ve followed this up by checking every dental surgery in Mid Sussex, to find NOT ONE currently taking new adult NHS patients – meaning emergency cases can only be dealt with privately at huge expense. Only ONE practice, in Burgess Hill, is taking children as NHS patients. That means new residents, or those who have lapsed seeing their dentist, will have to pay more for their treatment, go without, or resort to dealing with issues themselves. 

“In one response to my survey a resident said they had resorted to removing their own teeth,” said Alison Bennett, the Liberal Democrats’ parliamentary candidate for Mid Sussex. “This resonates with reports in the national and medical press. We are sliding back to a Victorian healthcare system where being wealthy is the key to having good dental health.”

The Lib Dems want to improve access to NHS dentists by boosting funding, increasing training places for new dentists, reforming NHS dental contracts and making it easier to recruit experienced dentists to fill vacancies – so no one has to resort to DIY dentistry.