Do you hope to get your teeth fixed on the NHS? Forget it!

• YOUR correspondent Alice Talbot has been lucky if she has only recently encountered a lack of NHS dentists, (Cash for health and social care, October 12).

Far from a product of the current Conservative government, it was the Tony Blair government’s revision of NHS dental contracts which began the decline of NHS dentistry.

Following that, some dentists went private. I returned to one for a repair to a crown he had provided, and he told me: “I cannot touch you as I have withdrawn from the NHS because they no longer allow me to work to my standard.”

Another told me that many procedures “did not pay”. The previous clean-up as part of an annual check-up was also charged separately.

When I responded to an advertisement from an NHS dentist in Soho, the dentist examined my damaged tooth, showed me a book of crowns and leafed through.

I was puzzled, as previous dentists had provided what was appropriate, and asked him what he would recommend. He responded “depends how much you want to pay”.

I said I was an NHS patient, whereupon he grabbed my head, did a quick unnecessary filling and turfed me out.

I later heard someone say she “still had an NHS dentist… when I go for a check-up he – in knowing tone – ‘finds a filling’”.

The days of dentists setting up or buying into a practice and staying until retirement have long gone. It seems to me that many dentists now set up with aid of NHS funding for expensive equipment, advertise their services, but do little without extra payment, or refer patients to private clinics with which they have a connection.

JM CASTLES, W2