COUNCILLORS have been urged to “demand action” over York’s dentistry crisis - with one health expert warning “enough is enough”.

The comments were made by Sian Balsom, manager at Healthwatch York, during the latest City of York Council (CYC) health and wellbeing board meeting.

Healthwatch’s newest report on dental care shed light on the city’s situation - with 80 per cent of people struggling to access timely care between January and March 2021.

The report states that York and the rest of the UK’s dental care service is facing an “immediate crisis”.

Out of 39 dental practices, not one practice was currently accepting new NHS adult patients. While only one practice was able to offer NHS treatment to children of patients enrolled on their private care plan.

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Sian Balsom, manager at Healthwatch York, told the meeting: “I don’t think we should tolerate this any longer. I am asking, can we lobby for change here? Can we demand action on this? Because I don’t think this is an acceptable situation.

“I hope you will all support something collectively to ask for this to stop because people in this city deserve to have access to dental care that enables them to live their lives without pain, to be able to eat the foods that help them feel healthy.”

She added: “I could go on about this for hours.

“Can we campaign on this? Can we make some strong statements? Because enough is enough.”

The meeting also heard how some GPs were prescribing antibiotics for dental-related issues with primary care facing the brunt of long waits for treatment.

Dr Emma Broughton said: "The consequences of the absence of dentistry is that patients present to their general practitioner and A&E with dental problems.

"I am not a dentist, I am a GP, but I can't see people in pain suffering therefore I will give people pain relief or antibiotics and it is not the correct thing.

"Our BMA (British Medical Association) contract is very clear GPs should not be treating dental problems - but it is very hard to ignore a patient who is unwell and in need.

"It's something else to put more weight on NHS England."

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Sharon Stoltz, director of public health at CYC, said dentistry had been “one of its areas of concern for some years now”.

She added that work on an improvement strategy - by the oral health improvement group - had been pushed back by the pandemic.

The director said: “I’m very aware of this issue and my inbox regularly gets full of people struggling to access their dentistry.

“It’s Government maybe we need to be lobbying, there’s a limit to what commissioners can do. If we want to raise this above York, does York want to go on record and start to lobby really, really hard for this?”

The director proposed inviting the chief dental officer of the NHS to a dedicated meeting with the board.

She said: “We can either sit back and do nothing or we can, as Sian says, accept the challenge and say, ‘Right, we’re going to put our hand up York and lobby nationally for some answers to this problem.”

The Healthwatch York report recommended improvements in access, affordability and the clarity of information while calling for more integrated care systems.

It found many dentists were facing a staffing crisis with treatment based on new appointments in the coming months.

Other reasons for delayed treatment included a backlog of patients needing NHS care, the impact of coronavirus and dentists retiring as well as reduced capacity.

You can watch the full discussion here...