Publish date: 14 July 2025
In February 2025, the government announced a commitment to provide an additional 700,000 of new dental appointments for urgent and unplanned care, supported by some additional funding.
As part of this, NHS Cheshire and Merseyside was allocated the provision of an additional 46,600 appointments. These appointments have been made available through the delivery of additional dental sessions (for urgent/unscheduled dental appointments) at 124 local dental practices across Cheshire and Merseyside, which equates to around a third of all dental practices providing NHS dentistry in the area.
With this offer now in place, there is some additional system capacity currently available for urgent dental care, and we want to ensure that these additional sessions are fully utilised.
Patients are advised to continue to contact the Cheshire and Merseyside dental helpline 0161 476 9651 as the first point of contact for help to access urgent and unplanned care appointments, although patients can also contact local practices to enquire about this directly too.