People pulling own teeth due to lack of urgent NHS dental care in England, watchdog finds

Key Highlights

• Even when they have been taken on as regular patients at an NHS dentist, many people wait months for a routine appointment.
• We have repeatedly highlighted these significant issues with accessing NHS dentists.”As a result, problems are not being prevented or treated early enough, and urgent care becomes the only form of dental care people can access. The government has committed to delivering 700,000 additional urgent appointments a year through to 2028-29. In a dental emergency people should be able to get an urgent appointment within 24 hours or seven days, depending on the symptoms.
• Sometimes this is through a person’s regular NHS dentist, or via an urgent appointment arranged by calling 111, who may have details of practices that will see urgent cases. NHS 111 data shows that calls about dental issues in England have risen recently.
• Between July and September 2025, call volumes were about 20% higher than in the same period the previous year. When local Healthwatch teams in the north-east recently conducted mystery shopping calls to urgent services, volunteers made up to 15 calls without finding any available urgent care. People told the watchdog about long and exhausting attempts to secure an urgent NHS dentist appointment.
• For some, this meant hours spent on hold to 111, while for others it meant being referred to urgent care and then being told that no appointments were available. Elsewhere, the watchdog found when patients managed to get urgent dental treatment, the relief was only temporary. The blog said: “When urgent dental services shift from being a safety net for occasional crises to a default route for care, prevention is neglected, and patients suffer.”It added: “People report extreme pain, sleepless nights and worsening dental health.