“In many cases, they are forced to say ‘look, the choice is food on the table or dental treatment.’ And they have to make those decisions.”
New figures have revealed the shocking state of children’s teeth in Manchester compared to the rest of the country.
A report, which was discussed by Manchester Council earlier this year, showed that 60.8 per cent of five-year-olds in Manchester had some form of tooth decay – the fourth highest rate in England.
The report presented to Manchester City Council showed how “poor oral health remains a significant problem in the area”. Figures from the National Dental Epidemiology Program’s (NDEP) most recent oral health survey showed that over a fifth of a third of children in Manchester had some experience of tooth decay, which is almost double the rate in England.
This caries experience is classified as one or more teeth that are damaged, missing or filled.
Hospital tooth extractions are almost two-thirds higher in Manchester
Nationally, tooth decay is the most common cause of hospital admission in children aged between six and 10, the newspaper warned. The total cost to the NHS of hospital admissions for tooth extractions in children aged 0 to 19 has been estimated at £81 million, the paper reports.
The report adds: “Nearly a third (31.7 per cent) of adults aged 16 and over who attended a general dentist in Manchester had active tooth decay, compared with 26.8 per cent of adults across England. When asked, more than half (53.8 per cent) of mildly dependent older people who had not visited in the last two years said that they had visited the dentist in Manchester that they had caries in Manchester.
“This compares with 34 per cent of mildly dependent older people across England as a whole.”
Another measure of oral health in Manchester is the number of “completed episodes of hospital care for children and adolescents involving tooth extraction”, the paper said. These procedures usually, but not exclusively, require general anesthesia and are carried out in an NHS hospital setting either on an inpatient or day care basis.
In 2023-24, there were 910 episodes of hospital care for tooth extractions in children and young people aged 0-19 years living in Manchester. More than one in 10 (12 per cent) of these were in children aged five and under and around 77 per cent of the extractions were where tooth decay was the main reason for the procedure.
The latest figures from 2023/24 show that the rate of these incidents for 0-19 year olds in Manchester was 61 per cent higher than the rate for England as a whole.
Dentists don’t keep up with people who move
The number of dentists contracted to carry out NHS work in Manchester has fell from a peak of 404 in 2022/23 to 343 in 2024/25 (ie there are 61 fewer dentists who have been practicing NHS practice in Manchester for two years before). The number is similar to the immediate pre-pandemic period (2019/20) when there were 345 dentists contracted to carry out NHS activity in Manchester.
However, the report explained that during the five years since 2019/20, the estimated size of the resident population has increased by 3.8 per cent. The number of dentists contracted to carry out NHS activity in the city has not increased in the same stable way.
Although the number of NHS contract dentists in Manchester rise as services return to full capacity after the first year of the pandemic, the number now has returned to pre-pandemic levels.
This means the number of dentists available to serve the population that lives in the city (expressed as a percentage per 100,000 population) has decreased. In In 2024/2025, there were 61 dentists for every 100,000 people in Manchester. a decrease from 71 dentists per 100,000 population in 2022/2023.
THE The figure for Manchester is still better than that for Greater Manchester and England as a whole.
It waits more than a year for complex cases
Waiting times for tooth extraction under general anesthesia “continue to be a challenge locally and nationally”, the report says. The total number of children currently waiting for general anesthesia in Manchester hospitals is 434, of which around 200 have been waiting for 36 weeks and 94 for 52 weeks.
Tthe current wait to assess this service is approximately 35 weeks. Patients who wait longer require more complex care.
Trafford General Hospital has a ‘high volume, low complexity’ approach to general anesthesia cases, so the waiting time is around six weeks. But in major acute hospitals, such as Manchester Dental and Children’s Hospitals, the waiting time for complex cases requiring general anesthesia is around 65 weeks.
“The challenges in dealing with these waiting times are largely due to accessing theater capacity for complex cases and managing the demand for initial assessment. [Manchester hospitals] continue to consider expanding the footprint across their sites to access greater theater capacity for complex general anesthesia cases,” the report said.
Deprivation and dentistry
Decayed teeth continue to be the most common cause of hospital admission for children aged between five and nine nationally. “This position directly reflects health inequalities between the most and least deprived communities, which clearly affects the city of Manchester,” the report said.
“Access to dentistry continues to be a national and local challenge… gOral health continues to be a challenge for the population of Manchester,” he continued. “With poor oral health there is still a need for dental treatment, which means there is a high demand for access to dental services and for many of our children it results in long waits for care.”
For families struggling with their oral health, it can also mean heavy costs. Jim Rochford, who runs dental practices in Levenshulme and Wythenshawe, says the cost of dental work has left the “working poor” particularly vulnerable. He said: “One of the big challenges is that dentistry is not free, for those people who have to pay dental costs, it can be a real imposition… [The working poor] they are the most deserving of dental care in many ways, but a complex course of treatment can cost upwards of £320.
“In many cases, they’re forced to say ‘look, the choice is food on the table or dental treatment’. And they have to make those decisions.”
