We recently held a public consultation on a package of changes to improve access to, and improve the quality of, National Health Service dentistry, which will deliver better care for the diverse oral health needs of people across England. The consultation closed on 19 August.

The Government is considering the outcomes of the consultation and will publish a response in due course, with the expectation of implementing the reforms from April 2026.

The Government is considering the outcomes of the consultation and will publish a response in due course.

Information on the number of women accessing perinatal mental health services in Wiltshire, provided by the NHS Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board, the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, and Wiltshire Health and Care over the last five years to May 2025, is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-health-services-monthly-statistics

NHS England has advised that the average time between referral and assessment for patients using the Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire specialist community perinatal mental health team was as follows:

• 12 days in 2021/22;
• 12 days in 2022/23;
• eight days in 2023/24;
• nine days in 2024/25; and
• seven days in 2025/26, from April to June.

There are no current plans to fully reform the units of dental activity (UDA) system before 2026/27. As a first step to reforming the dental contract, we are consulting on a package of changes to improve access to, and improve the quality of, National Health Service dentistry, which will deliver improved care for the diverse oral health needs of people across England. The reforms include new payment proposals for some treatments, which would be converted to UDAs for the purposes of reconciliation. Further information on the consultation is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/nhs-dentistry-contract-quality-and-payment-reforms

The consultation was launched on 8 July 2025 and will close on 19 August 2025.

We are committed to more fundamental contract reform, as set out in the 10-Year Health Plan. We want a contract that matches resources to needs, improves access, promotes prevention, and rewards dentists fairly, while enabling the whole dental team to work to the top of their capability. There are no perfect payment models, and careful consideration needs to be given to any potential changes to the complex dental system so that we deliver genuine improvements for patients and the profession.

The Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access National Health Service dental care with a plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most.

Integrated care boards have started to recruit posts through the Golden Hello scheme. This recruitment incentive will see dentists receiving payments of £20,000 to work in those areas that need them most for three years.

Training a dentist costs the taxpayer up to £200,000. Having consulted on the principle of requiring all dentists to work in the NHS for a minimum period, we will now make it a requirement for newly qualified dentists to practice in the NHS for a minimum period. We intend this minimum period to be at least three years. That will mean more NHS dentists, more NHS appointments, and better oral health.

As a first step to reforming the dental contract, we are consulting on a package of changes to improve access to, and improve the quality of, NHS dentistry, which will deliver improved care for the diverse oral health needs of people across England. Further information on the consultation is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/nhs-dentistry-contract-quality-and-payment-reforms

The consultation was launched on 8 July 2025 and will close on 19 August 2025.

The Government is committed to delivering a National Health Service that is fit for the future, with world class infrastructure across the entire NHS estate and confronting the challenges posed by historic underinvestment in primary care.

There are 8,500 buildings that form the general practice (GP) estate nationally and we have worked with integrated care systems to develop infrastructure strategies which create a long-term plan for future estate requirements and investment for each local area and its specific needs. These strategies bring together planning for the existing and future primary care and secondary estate when considering how best to improve local service delivery.

Bath, Northeast Somerset, Swindon & Wiltshire Integrated Care Board is responsible for commissioning, planning, securing, and monitoring GP services within Wiltshire through delegated responsibility from NHS England and works with local practices to ensure that the community continues to receive world class health services.

We recently announced over 1,000 GP schemes which will benefit from this year's £102 million Primary Care Utilisation and Modernisation Fund, supporting GPs to improve the use of their existing buildings and space, boosting productivity and enabling delivery of more appointments. However, GPs are independent contractors who should routinely fund investment in maintaining their estate by utilising their own funds, borrowing, or through partnerships with third party developers.

The Government is committed to delivering a National Health Service that is fit for the future, with world class infrastructure across the entire NHS estate and confronting the challenges posed by historic underinvestment in primary care.

There are 8,500 buildings that form the general practice (GP) estate nationally and we have worked with integrated care systems to develop infrastructure strategies which create a long-term plan for future estate requirements and investment for each local area and its specific needs. These strategies bring together planning for the existing and future primary care and secondary estate when considering how best to improve local service delivery.

Bath, Northeast Somerset, Swindon & Wiltshire Integrated Care Board is responsible for commissioning, planning, securing, and monitoring GP services within Wiltshire through delegated responsibility from NHS England and works with local practices to ensure that the community continues to receive world class health services.

We recently announced over 1,000 GP schemes which will benefit from this year's £102 million Primary Care Utilisation and Modernisation Fund, supporting GPs to improve the use of their existing buildings and space, boosting productivity and enabling delivery of more appointments. However, GPs are independent contractors who should routinely fund investment in maintaining their estate by utilising their own funds, borrowing, or through partnerships with third party developers.

Data on completion of the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism (Oliver’s Training) is held locally and is reported to NHS England by integrated care boards. This data does not differentiate between completion by frontline staff and other National Health Service and social care staff, and is instead focussed on overall completion of Tier 1 and Tier 2. Tier 1 of Oliver’s Training is for those that require general awareness for their role, and Tier 2 is for those who may provide direct care for people with a learning disability and autistic people. The first part of both tiers of training is a co-produced e-learning module which has had over three million completions across all audiences. The most recently validated data on completion of both parts held by NHS England is up to March 2025, when it was reported that 85,718 staff had completed Tier 1 training and 113,003 had completed Tier 2 training.

NHS England is supporting the roll out of the training on a Payment by Results basis, co-coordinated by integrated care boards, and continues to monitor training uptake.

The latest year in which workforce data is available is 2023/24. There were 440 dentists who undertook some level of National Health Service activity in the Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board (ICB).

Due to changes in how data is collected, the Department cannot make a direct comparison to the number of dentists in 2013/14.

However, in that year there were 238 dentists who undertook some level of NHS activity in the Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group area. Please note that this area covers a smaller geographic area than the Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB.

The Carr-Hill formula, which underpins capitation payments to general practices (GPs), is designed to ensure that resources are directed to practices based on an estimate of their patient workload and unavoidable practice costs.

It is a workload-based formula, introduced in 2004, that is designed to ensure that practices are reimbursed for their expected workload. Practices are paid more if their registered patients are expected to use services more based on past usage patterns of patients with similar characteristics. It takes into account factors, such as the sex and age of patients, morbidity and mortality, patient list turnover, and unavoidable costs based on geographical area.

We recognise the importance of ensuring that funding for core services is distributed equitably between practices across the country, and will therefore review the Carr-Hill formula. Details of the review, including timeframes, will be confirmed in due course.

We are investing an additional £889 million in GPs to reinforce the front door of the National Health Service, bringing total spend on the GP Contract to £13.2 billion in 2025/26. This is the biggest increase in over a decade, and we are pleased that the General Practitioners Committee England is supportive of the contract changes.

The Primary Care Utilisation and Modernisation Fund will deliver upgrades to more than a thousand general practice surgeries across England this year. This includes nine schemes in the Bath, Northeast Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board (BNSSW ICB), totalling a capital investment of £1.5 million. This is the first dedicated national capital fund for primary care since 2020.

The following table shows the operational capital allocated to the BNSSW ICB for the last three financial years, which was subsequently prioritised at their discretion:

This covers maintenance and other capital spend across the BNSSW ICB, and it is at local discretion whether an element is allocated to primary care.

The following table shows the number of new referrals in 2024/25 for those aged zero to 17 years old, and their associated waiting times, in Wiltshire:

Source: Mental Health Services Dataset.

To work under a National Health Service primary care dental services contract, a dentist must join the NHS Dental Performers List. This is not a requirement for other members of the dental team, and the Government has no plans to change this.

Amendments to the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 took effect on 26 June 2024, to allow dental hygienists and dental therapists to supply or administer specific medicines under exemptions, supporting them to work to their full scope of practice.

NHS England has issued guidance which includes information about training for those wishing to work under the exemptions. All education should be supported by a certificate as well as reflection for personal development. The guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/supply-and-administration-of-medicines-by-dental-hygienists-and-dental-therapists/#which-medicines-are-approved-for-supply-and-administration

This guidance also clarified that whilst dental therapists and dental hygienists do not have performer numbers, they can open and close NHS courses of treatment and provide further direct access to NHS care, where that care is within the General Dental Council’s Scope of Practice, if they are qualified, competent, and indemnified to do so.

From 1 April 2024, the Department raised the minimum Unit of Dental Activity (UDA) rate to £28 to support practices with historically low UDA rates, benefitting 876 contracts. Integrated care boards (ICBs) have the flexibility to influence the UDA rate locally, which may help to support local interventions, and there are differential UDA rates across England. Differential UDA rates allow providers to use differing pay rates to reflect the local market rates.

More broadly, the Government is committed to reforming the dental contract and will not wait to make improvements to the current system where these can increase access and incentivise the workforce to deliver more National Health Service care.

The 10-Year Health Plan will set out the next steps the Government will take to rebuild dentistry in the long term.

We will reform the dental contract with the sector, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of National Health Service dentists. There are no perfect payment systems, and careful consideration needs to be given to any potential changes to the complex dental system so that we deliver a system better for patients and the profession.

We are continuing to meet the British Dental Association and other representatives of the dental sector to discuss how we can best deliver our shared ambition to improve access for NHS dental patients.

Lord Darzi’s independent review of the National Health Service, published in September 2024, highlighted the severe delays for accessing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessments and that demand for assessments for ADHD has grown significantly in recent years.

NHS England has established an ADHD taskforce which is bringing together those with lived experience with experts from the NHS, education, charity and justice sectors to get a better understanding of the challenges affecting those with ADHD, including in accessing services and support. An interim is expected to be published shortly, with the final report expected in summer 2025.

For the first time, NHS England published management information on ADHD waits at a national level on 29 May 2025 as part of its ADHD data improvement plan; it will soon release technical guidance to integrated care boards (ICBs) to improve recording of ADHD data, with a view to improving the quality of ADHD waits data. NHS England has also captured examples from ICBs who are trialling innovative ways of delivering ADHD services and is using this information to support systems to tackle ADHD waiting lists and provide support to address people’s needs.

There is, at present, no single, established dataset that can be used to monitor waiting times for assessment and diagnosis for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) for individual organisations by regions in England. Although the data requested is not held centrally, it may be held locally by individual National Health Service trusts or commissioners.

For the first time, NHS England published management information on ADHD waits at a national level on 29 May 2025 as part of its ADHD data improvement plan; it has also released technical guidance to integrated care boards (ICBs) to improve recording of ADHD data, with a view to improving the quality of ADHD waits data and publishing more localised data in future.

NHS England has established an ADHD taskforce which is bringing together those with lived experience with experts from the NHS, education, charity and justice sectors to get a better understanding of the challenges affecting those with ADHD, including in accessing services and support. An interim report is expected to be published shortly, with the final report expected in the summer. NHS England has also captured examples from ICBs who are trialling innovative ways of delivering ADHD services and is using this information to support local systems to tackle ADHD waiting lists and provide support to address people’s needs.

A dental cost survey was launched on 13 May 2025 to conduct further research on the costs of running dental practices in England. The aim of the survey is to provide an accurate understanding of the costs and pressures facing the dental sector.

The findings of the 2025 Dentistry Cost Survey will be published following the conclusion of the project.

The Department does not hold data on average dispensing time, and it is not routinely collected. Pharmacies are independent businesses who follow their own individual standard operating procedures in dispensing medicines. How they order, receive, and label medicines will vary according to their business model and will depend on if a medicine is a repeat or an acute prescription.

Pharmacies are expected to maintain a reasonable stock holding to meet their legal obligations to dispense all prescriptions with reasonable promptness, recognising that it is not feasible for a pharmacy to maintain stock of every medicine.

No assessment has been made. It is important that anybody who wants to access bereavement support can do so. We encourage anybody that wants to access support to speak with their general practitioner in the first instance.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning the significant majority of health services in their areas, ensuring these services meet the reasonable needs of their local population. NHS England has developed guidance to support ICBs with their duty to commission palliative care services within integrated care systems. This statutory guidance states commissioners should ensure there is sufficient access to bereavement services available for families and carers, including children and young people. Additionally, every local authority now has a multi-agency suicide prevention plan in place to address the needs of people in their area, which should include suicide bereavement support services.