Almost 9% of NHS dentist-registered children have had no check-up in five years

Almost 9% of children registered with an NHS dentist have not had a check-up in the last five years, data given to the Scottish Liberal Democrats shows.

A freedom of information request by the party revealed 78,932 children and young people registered with an NHS dentist have not had an appointment in five years.

This is 8.8% of the total number of under-18s registered with NHS dentists.

Some 27.2% have not been seen in the last two years, and 20,783 have not been seen within 10 years.

Scottish Government ministers have often highlighted that 95% of the population is registered with an NHS dentist, and insisted dental services are recovering following the pandemic.

Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “While the SNP continue serving up their great dentistry distortion, children and young people are struggling to access the toothcare they need.

“It’s vital that we support good oral health from a young age, enable problems to be caught early and ensure the healthy development of mouth and teeth.

“It seems, however, that this SNP Government would rather hide behind a statistic that mispresents the situation, stalls action on key problems and fails hundreds of thousands of children and young people.

“Scottish Liberal Democrats have set out plans which would deliver quality, accessible dentistry in every community.

“To save NHS dentistry, we would reform the funding structures to enable more NHS patients to be seen and rewrite the NHS recovery plan to include a comprehensive plan for dentists.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Last year more than 660,000 child examinations were provided by NHS dentists.

“We have also increased funding to child dental services by introducing, for the first time, an enhanced examination fee from February 1 2022.

“Attendance at the dentist is only one way we are delivering improvements in child oral health.

“Our flagship Childsmile programme offers every child attending nursery in our most deprived communities free daily supervised tooth brushing and fluoride varnish application.

“Additionally, despite the pandemic, the National Dental Inspection Programme showed that 73% of primary 1 children had no obvious tooth decay in 2021/22 compared with only 45% in 2002/2003.”