SWINDON'S health boss tried to get a share of an underspend by NHS England of £400m on its dental budget to use on preventative care in the borough.

Members of the council’s health and wellbeing board were discussing a report on the state of Swindon’s oral health which shows it is, in general, worse than the England and the South West average on a number of indicators.

One of the issues, according to the report’s author Joshua Khan is that people in Swindon are finding it more difficult to find a dentist, a known problem nationwide and one that has got worse since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Director of place for Swindon at the BWS Integrated Care Board Gordon Muvuti said: “Because of the shortage of dentists taking on NHS work, there is a £400m underspend in this year’s dental budget.”

The council’s director of public health Steve Maddern said: “We were in a meeting when this came up and we did try to get some for ourselves. If it’s not being used, we could use some of it for preventative dental work.”

Professor Maddern said the needs assessment that was presented to the board would be used as a basis for a dental health strategy for the borough.

He said: “It’s unusual that the needs assessment would be presented on its own – normally we’d bring a strategy and the assessment would be the academic work underpinning it.

“We will be developing a strategy based upon it.”

The board agreed with council chief executive Susie Kemp's comment that oral and dental health was linked to other public health issues such as obesity and smoking: “If you eat a lot of sweets you’re going to get fat and lose your teeth; if you smoke tobacco, you’ll have yellow teeth.”

Members of the board were keen to promote preventative oral hygiene to be a major part of the strategy.

Councillor Pam Adams said: “We seem to be waiting for children’s teeth to rot and then try and sort that out. It would be much better to teach them to prevent that.”

Her colleague Coun Ray Ballman said that toothbrushes were always a highly sought-after item for users of foodbanks, saying: “If they don’t have and can’t afford a toothbrush, then knowing to brush their teeth is no use.”

Mr Maddern said it was very useful information for the public health team to know that toothbrushes were an item in high demand.