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Search forRent paid since January 2006 on empty NHS dentist rooms
Thursday, November 20, 2008, 09:00
People desperate for an NHS dentist were eager to sign up to the new service when the Clays Area Health Centre opened in January 2006.
Now the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly PCT says it will be April 2009 before anyone can be treated there.
Practice manager Judith Kurth said: "The centre was to include as many of the services which could come together to provide good health and social welfare, including dental facilities which are sorely needed. When we opened that was the one question on people's lips; when's the dentist coming?"
St Austell MP Matthew Taylor and Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate Stephen Gilbert made the shocking discovery last week.
Mr Taylor said: "The doctors in Roche, Stephen and myself are gobsmacked that the investment has been put in for a new dentist facility but it isn't being used. It is clear that there is a desperate need but the PCT is now saying that it won't fund it.
"This simply suggests that NHS dentistry just isn't being backed because everybody knows it isn't possible to get an NHS dentist anywhere in the area, but here are rooms lying empty with all the expensive facilities ready.
"From the Government down to the PCT there needs to be a clear determination to sort out NHS dental services and there is nowhere better to start than to fill those expensively equipped rooms."
Surgery bosses say the issue resurfaced in August this year when PCT dental clinical director Peter Knibbs took interest in the vacant rooms, saying he had found the money to fund a NHS dentist in the practice.
Mrs Kurth said: "I know that when Matthew Taylor came around he was amazed that the rooms are empty.
"It is a crying shame that the PCT is paying for these rooms and no one is using them."
Peter Knibbs, director of primary care at the PCT, said: "When the new building for the Clays Practice was planned, this included provision for an NHS dentist.
"Unfortunately, just before the rooms were due to be fitted the dentist who had planned to use these facilities decided not to set up a practice in the surgery. This was disappointing but in their role as independent practitioners, dentists are free to choose where they practice as either NHS or private dentists.
"Following this decision, the two rooms identified for a dental surgery have since been used by the practice for other NHS care."
A new dental strategy for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly was published earlier this year, and the Clay Practice dentist is one of the key actions identified.
Plans are now being taken forward to identify a new dentist who will work as part of the NHS salaried service and provide routine care for local residents.
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