asked Her Majesty's Government:

How many people in (a) Elsenham, (b) Stansted Mountfitchet, (c) Uttlesford District, (d) the Saffron Walden constituency, and (e) Essex are not registered with an NHS dentist. [HL4449]

Information is not available in the format requested.

Under the new dental contractual arrangements introduced on 1 April 2006, patients do not have to be registered with a National Health Service dentist to receive NHS care. The closest equivalent measure to “registration” is the number of patients receiving NHS dental services (“patients seen”) over a 24-month period. However, this is not directly comparable to the registration data for earlier years.

Information is available on the numbers of patients seen by an NHS dentist over the previous 24-month period, as a percentage of the population. The most recent information is available in table C2 of Annex 3 of the report NHS Dental Statistics for England: Quarter 3: 31 December 2007. Information is provided by strategic health authority and by primary care trust and is available for the 24-month periods ending 31 March 2006, 31 March 2007, 30 June 2007, 30 September 2007 and 31 December 2007.

Copies of this report, published on 5 June 2008, are available in the Library and are also available on the information centre for health and social carers’ website at: www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/dentalstats0708q3.