AN extra 24,000 urgent NHS dental appointments will be made available in Devon, Health Minister Stephen Kinnock has announced.

The county is to benefit from 24,269 extra appointments as a part of the government’s pledge to tackle what it calls ‘Dental deserts’, areas where patients struggle to get appointments.

In total, 700,018 additional appointments will be available across England.

Stephen Kinnock, Minister of State for Care, said: ‘We promised we would end the misery faced by hundreds of thousands of people unable to get urgent dental care.

‘Today [Friday, February 21] we are starting to deliver on that commitment.’

Kinnock said NHS dentistry had been ‘left broken after years of neglect’.

This comes as new data into children’s oral health showed that more than a fifth of five-year-old school children have signs of dental decay.

And a recent report by the National Audit Office found that access to NHS dentistry remains below pre-pandemic levels.