Mr Patsy McGlone (Mid Ulster): To ask the Minister of Health to detail (i) the number of dental practices accepting new NHS patients; and (ii) the number of dental practices that have stopped accepting new NHS patients, in each of the last five years, broken down by Health and Social Care Trust.
Minister of Health: Dental practices manage their own workloads. No information is held centrally in relation to whether they are currently accepting new health service patients or have previously ceased accepting them.
The number of dental practices, including orthodontic and specialist practices, that carry out health service dentistry in each of the last five financial years by the Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust), is shown below in Table 1.
Table 1: Number of Health Service Dental Practices by Local Commissioning Group (Health Trust) in each of the last five financial years.
| Financial Year | Belfast | Northern | South Eastern | Southern | Western |
| 2020/211 | 90 | 87 | 67 | 67 | 57 |
| 2021/221 | 89 | 87 | 66 | 67 | 56 |
| 2022/231 | 87 | 87 | 66 | 67 | 56 |
| 2023/241 | 88 | 87 | 66 | 68 | 55 |
| 2024/251 | 87 | 84 | 66 | 67 | 55 |
| 2025/262 | 85 | 83 | 65 | 66 | 55 |
1 At 31st March of the financial year
2 At 31st December of the financial year – most recently available published official statistics.
Information on the number of dental practices by Local Commissioning Group, Local Government District and Assembly Area is routinely published on a quarterly basis in the tables 7.1-7.3 from the Accredited Official Statistics publication: FPS General Dental Services Statistics Quarterly Update, with the most recent at the following link: https://bso.hscni.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/dental_quarterly_tables_q3_25-26_published.xlsx
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