PRIMARY school children across York should have daily 'supervised toothbrushing' sessions every day in school, says a top York councillor.

Christian Vassie, a member of the authority's health scrutiny committee, says the city's dental crisis is worsening, with more and more people unable to access an NHS dentist.

Supervised toothbrushing in primary schools - already practised in cities like Bradford, as well as countries like Sweden and Japan - could help prevent children developing dental problems in the first place, he says.

"Just as children eat together at lunchtime, they could also be brushing their teeth together after they have eaten," Cllr Vassie said.

"This would transform the lives of many children, showing them how to look after their teeth and developing the good habit of daily brushing.

"Since schools exist to prepare and educate children for their lives ahead, two minutes daily tooth brushing after lunch should be childsplay!"

Cllr Vassie plans to raise the idea at the next meeting of the authority's health scrutiny committee in July.

Healthwatch York published a report in January showing that only 59 per cent of York residents had an NHS dentist, down from 84 per cent in 2018.

According to Clr Vassie, only half of children in England now have access to an NHS dentist. "Full council has already agreed that this is a catastrophe," he said.

"At our next (health scrutiny) meeting I will be proposing that the city council work with all York's primary schools to copy what they do in Sweden where daily supervised toothbrushing in primary schools forms part of the programme to ensure that children know how to brush their teeth and get into the habit of doing it.

"In January this year the health scrutiny committee received a report on oral health promotion. This report acknowledged the importance of teaching children how to brush their teeth. What the schemes in Sweden and Bradford do is to take this one step further.

"I will ask the executive members for health and for education to explore working with our healthcare providers and our primary schools and businesses across the city to make this happen.

"While we need to highlight the Conservative government's scandalous failure to act, we also need as a matter of urgency to put in place a programme to help ensure that all the city's children learn how to look after their teeth."

Jonathan Green, the headteacher of Naburn C of E Primary School, said that in principle it was a 'good idea'.

The state of children's teeth had been a concern for some time, Mr Green said. "So I believe something like this would be great."