Following an announcement that £50million of Government money is to be spent creating 350,000 more dental appointments, Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely has written to Island health bosses encouraging them to submit a bid for a share of the funding pot.
The Isle of Wight can bid for part of a £7million funding pot allocated to the South East region to help services get back to pre-pandemic levels and give people access to the care they need.
In his letter to the Isle of Wight Clinical Commissioning Group, Mr Seely said:
“I am writing to you with regard to the £50 million of funding recently made available by the Department of Health and Social Care, in order to ameliorate the recent NHS dentistry backlog.
“As I understand it, Clinical Commissioning Groups are required to tender bids for a share of the allocated funding. I am writing to you to urge you to proffer your bid at the soonest appropriate date.”
Mr Seely has also written to Health Secretary Sajid Javid in pre-emptive support of an Isle of Wight bid. In his letter to Mr Javid, he said:
“The Isle of Wight’s dentistry services have been one of the public amenities most severely affected by the pandemic. I have received regular correspondence from constituents who have struggled to find NHS dental practices with capacity.
“This is compounded by the Island’s less economically developed status, meaning many who are unable to secure public dentistry services lack the necessary finances to pay for private treatment: some were forced to regularly pay exorbitant ferry prices in order to receive public dental services on the mainland; others (who could not afford ferry tickets) resorted to amateur and unsafe dental practices.”
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This is not the first time Mr Seely has highlighted the problems Islanders face in trying to access an NHS dentist. Previously he has spoken on the subject during Parliamentary questions and debates and evidenced the issues in letters and written questions to Ministers. He recently highlighted the issues to Health Minister Maria Caulfield putting forward some suggestions as to how to tackle the issue.
Bob says:
“I have made it very clear to Ministers that the Isle of Wight needs help to create more dentistry appointments. I have also suggested ways Government can do this. This is not something we can easily fix ourselves; it needs Government intervention.
“I am pleased Government has set aside this pot of money to fund additional appointments and I hope it will look favourably on an Isle of Wight bid.
“I will continue to highlight the Island’s issues to Westminster colleagues to try to secure as much help and support for Islanders as possible.”
Mr Seely uses the words “exorbitant ferry prices”. It’s not just those visiting a dentist that have to pay these high ferry fares! So this is a statement that Mr Seely recognises that isle ferry prices are unreasonably high. His time would be better spent in parliament, gathering momentum for the government to force the ferry companies to reduce ticket prices. This would benefit all Isle of Wight residents.
Dentists are a rip off, my last one caused £500 worth of damage roughly 22 years ago, I haven’t been back since and my mouth and teeth have never been better, no tooth ache, bad breadth or anything since then and I’ve still got
95%of my own teeth at 60
I feel that if the Council could get some more money from the Government, would this enable the Council/NHS to offer any Dentists that might come, as well as the NHS dentists already here,extra money to help with the Ferry Costs.