New £5m dental facility coming to city centre

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS WILL WORK ALONGSIDE CLINICAL SPECIALISTS

- WILLIAM TELFORD

PLYMOUTH city centre is to get a "game changing" £5m facility where aspiring dentists and therapists will treat patients in urgent need of dental care. Peninsula Dental Social Enterprise (PDSE), a subsidiary of the University of Plymouth, has taken a 20-year lease on Plymouth City Council's former First Stop Shop, in New George Street.

During the coming months, and subject to planning permission being granted, it will be revamped and become home to the new Peninsula Dental Education Practice.

Two floors of the building will be remodelled into treatment and consultation spaces, complete with modern equipment and facilities and employing sustainable practices such as digital dentistry.

Once complete, it will offer appointments and an oral surgery service. This will enable up to 16 final-year students from the university's Peninsula Dental School to work alongside specialists and other qualified clinicians to provide urgent care to patients who do not have a regular NHS dentist and have presented with pain, infection and trauma.

The new practice will go some way to filling the huge demand for dental care in Plymouth, with long waiting lists across all NHS providers and a lack of practitioners to meet the demand.