Presenting a paper aimed at improving access to NHS dentistry to today’s meeting of NHS Tayside’s divisional primary care committee, director of primary care Dr Andrew Russell said the figures from the dental hospital showed “we really do have an impending crisis”.

Dr Russell said there was approval in principle for more than a million pounds to be invested in the short term on equipping premises in Perth, Dundee and Angus to deliver more dental services under the NHS.

In the longer term, there were plans to make further investments in providing more extensive facilities with salaried dentists working at a site to be developed at Kings Cross in Dundee and in a new facility in Perth and Kinross.

These longer-term facilities would require to go through a formal business planning process and be passed by the finance and resources committee of NHS Tayside.

“We are very fortunate we have the dental school on our doorstep and, for that reason, the position may not be as difficult in Tayside as in some other areas,” said Dr Russell.

In the past, health chiefs locally, as elsewhere, have been made aware of the dental health crisis through reports of queues of patients wishing to register with a dentist.

The problem was highlighted again today when local GP Dr David Dorward, attending today’s committee meeting in Kings Cross Hospital, Dundee, said it would appear there was a two-stream system developing, of private dentistry and dentistry from salaried NHS dentists.

He said talking to dental colleagues locally, one thing they complained about was they had to work so fast to make a living on the NHS, they felt quality suffered.

Dr Morag Curnow, clinical director for NHS Tayside’s community dental service, said she was not so sure the fast throughput was necessary so much “to make ends meet” as to service the demand from patients requiring NHS treatment.

Dr Curnow and her colleagues in the community dental service offer an emergency-only service to specific groups, in particular those who cannot get access to other NHS dentists in the community because they have a disability.

Dr Curnow said longer-term plans by NHS Tayside to take on more salaried dentists and expand NHS premises in Dundee, Perth and Angus would eventually mean new patients could register with those dentists for full care and treatment, instead of the current position where only emergency care and short episodes of treat- ment could be offered.