A Ramsey dental practice says it wants to take on more NHS patients - but hasn’t been given the government funding to do so.

Lack of NHS dental provision in the north of the island was raised in the House of Keys last week.

There are only two dental practices in the north - Grove Mount and Smile Dental Care.

New Health Minister David Ashford told the Keys that Smile had recently resolved a recruitment issue, allowing it to add 293 new NHS patients to its list.

Grove Mount Dental Care is a predominantly private practice but does offer some NHS dentistry to some 800 to 1,000 patients a year - and would like to do more.

Administrator Pauline Birnie said: ’We have all the dentists we need and have done so since we took over the practice in 2014.

’However, we have very little NHS funding and have been almost begging the health authority for additional funding to allow us to see more NHS patients, for over a year.’

Her husband Robert, who owns the practice, said a dentist who had left the practice last year had had a small NHS contract, with funding for 800 units of dental activity.

But he had given them back to the health authority which has since refused to return them, reducing the amount of NHS dentistry Grove Mount can provide.

Mr Birnie said: ’They said no because they are in a cost-saving exercise.’

Those 800 units of dental activity (UDAs) have not been allocated elsewhere.

The system of UDAs was introduced in 2006. Previously dentists were paid on a fee per item basis. A total of 142,879 UDAs were contracted for across the island in 2016-17.

Each dentist in the island gets paid a different amount per UDA, ranging from just under £24 to £32 per UDA with the island average being just over £27.

The north of the island has a similar population and demographic to the south of the island but has just half the number of UDAs (15,000 compared to 36,000).

Mrs Birnie said: ’Does the health authority think the island stops at Laxey? Are the people in the north of the island not entitled to the same access to dentists funded by the NHS as in the south?’

In Douglas, the Ravat and Ray practice will close in March after the DHSC terminated its contract. A Freedom of Information response last November showed it had achieved just 69% of its contracted UDAs in 2016-17.

Mrs Birnie claimed the tender process for a new provider was unfair as her husband was not invited to bid as he personally is not an NHS provider.

’Grove Mount Dental Practice would have been in a position to tender for an extra 2,000 patients in the north of the island to be seen on the NHS, but we were not even given to chance to tender,’ she said.