What does the pledge mean? 

In its 2024 election manifesto the Labour party pledged to deliver an additional 700,000 urgent dental appointments.

When we asked the Department of Heath and Social Care (DHSC) about this in November 2024, it confirmed this commitment still stands, but did not provide details of exactly how progress will be measured or what timeframe the government has set for this.

We assume this pledge refers to England only, as health is devolved, so the UK government does not have responsibility for it in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

We’ve not been able to find official figures on the number of dental appointments offered, but the British Dental Association told us that the closest proxy in official data is figures on the number of courses of dental treatment, which can include examination of a patient’s oral health, planning of any treatment or providing that treatment.

In 2023/24, the NHS in England delivered around 34 million courses of dental treatment. Of these, 3.7 million were recorded as urgent.

To put that in perspective, a costing document produced by the DHSC in February 2024 (when Labour was still in opposition) estimated that the promised 700,000 additional appointments would allow staff to perform an extra 324,000 courses of treatment.

What progress has been made?

We’ve rated this pledge as “In progress” because the DHSC has confirmed it remains committed to delivering it. But as noted above, we’ve been unable to confirm exactly how the government intends to measure performance against this target, which means it’s difficult to measure progress on this pledge. 

Data on the number of courses of dental treatment covering the period since Labour came into government hasn’t yet been published.

We also don’t have much information about how the government intends to deliver this pledge. We’ve not seen any major policy announcements about this and the DHSC didn’t provide us with any details when we got in touch in November 2024.