500 teeth removed from children in Southampton every year

The city council’s director of public health said all of these operations, which were carried out under general anaesthetic, should have been “preventable”.

Dr Debbie Chase said there had been conversations in the past around fluoridation of Southampton’s water supply to improve children’s dental health.

A plan to add fluoride to the public water supply serving around 200,000 in the city and parts of south west Hampshire was scrapped in 2014 after years of talks.

During discussion on densitry at the Southampton City Council’s health overview and scrutiny panel on Thursday, November 11, Dr Chase said there were around 500 tooth extractions for Southampton children being carried out annually.

She said her public health team worked with both early years settings and schools on promoting the importance of proper tooth brushing.

“Most early years settings across the city are engaged and [we have] links with child minders as well,” Dr Chase said.

“In the family hubs, we are doing work and then in some of the primary schools.”

Dr Chase said the public health team was focused on the most deprived areas of Southampton. She told the panel that a limited capacity was the main reason for not being engaged with every school in the city.

The previous proposal for fluoridation of the water supply was backed by NHS chiefs but it was opposed by both Southampton City Council and Hampshire County Council.

When the proposal was withdrawn in 2014, Public Health England said it did not want to proceed with the water fluoridation without the backing of the local authority where most of the residents who would benefit from it lived.

At the same scrutiny panel meeting, members received an update on the state of NHS dental services in the city from James Roach, director of primary care at NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board (ICB).

Mr Roach said: “We are making progress. It is not fast enough to meet the needs in the city but it is going in the right direction.

“We have a plan and if there is reform in the national contract, which we are pushing for and the local MP is helping with a question in that regard, then I think we will be in a good position to move forward.”

Primary dental care is commissioned by the ICB as units of dental activity (UDA), with each course of treatment allocated a number of UDAs based on what dental care was delivered.

Across Southampton, there are 24 contracts for NHS dental services to deliver 463,231 UDAs in 2024/25 As of September, 40 per cent of the city’s UDAs had been delivered.

“I’m not sitting here complacent to suggest it is solved,” Mr Roach said.

“I think we can absolutely point to an improvement and an increase in access.

“I think that is reflected in the number of units of dental activity undertaken in Southampton across a number of contracts.”

He highlighted that the mobile dental unit has delivered 12,000 treatments across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight since launching in February.

The mobile unit, which involves a partnership with dental charity Dentaid, ensured some of the most complex dentistry needs were being catered for, Mr Roach said.

He added: “What we are seeing with the data of people that access the mobile dental unit is the average number of UDAs per a patient are higher because we are effectively dealing with people who have got real dental need, real complexity, long term issues and we’re able to sort of resolve that at source.”

Mr Roach said there was a willingness from those holding NHS dentistry contracts to work with schools to educate and identify healthcare need at a local level.

He told councillors investment had been put forward for a dental nurse apprenticeship and there were plans for a centre for dental development in Portsmouth.

Mr Roach said this would be a “game changer” moving forward in creating a “pipeline of our own dentists”.