Appointments & Emergencies

We only provide emergency appointments for our own NHS patients.

If you are already a patient at the practice and need an emergency appointment, our phone line is available from 8.15am to take your call. Due to the high demand for emergency appointments, it is critical that you call before 8.30am, as appointments are limited and offered on a first come first served basis. After 8.30am, emergency appointments will be offered at the earliest available slot, unfortunately, this may not be within 24hrs.

Monday morning is our busiest time. Patients who did not seek help from the out of hours dental helpline, 111, at weekends and who wait until Monday for an appointment may not be able to secure a priority appointment.

Please note we do not operate a walk in surgery for any patients. Please call the surgery for advice and we will do our best to help you.

If you are a patient at this practice who requires an out of hours emergency appointment please contact the NHS Dental helpline on: 111.

The team has worked incredibly hard to reduce our waiting time for treatments from 18 months to 3 months, please understand that we continue to try to keep waiting times to a minimum but with reduced staff numbers and only 2 dentists instead of 4, we are doing our best.

If you have not attended in the last 6 months please book yourself in for a check up in the usual way and we will assess the problem before offering you an appointment.

Even if you have attended in the last 6 months, you may still be asked to attend for a short assessment appointment before we carry out your treatment, this is so we can ascertain how long we will need for your treatment, to take x-rays and establish a treatment plan.

We are unable to do assessment and treatment on the same day. As a consequence you will have to attend at least twice for the treatment that you need; once, for planning and then again for the treatment itself. To carry out treatments we have to be dressed in full PPE (respirator masks, gloves, gowns and visors) and once treatments begin, we are unable to leave the surgery to develop x-rays or change the plan.

PLEASE BE CONSIDERATE, WE HAVE OVER 10,000 PATIENTS WHO MAY NEED TO ACCESS THIS SERVICE.

Similarly, please do not send an email to request these appointments as reception staff are not able to assess your problem.

You will be asked to pay for treatment over the phone or at the assessment appointment.

WE DO NOT OFFER PRIORITY APPOINTMENTS TO PRIVATE PATIENTS, WE TRY TO OPERATE A FIRST COME FIRST SERVE POLICY AND AS SUCH, ALL PATIENTS ARE TREATED EQUALLY WHETHER YOU ARE AN NHS OR A PRIVATE PATIENT.

There are 20 minute and 30 minute appointments available with the hygienist. These appointments are only available once the dentist or hygienist has assessed your requirements and advised you accordingly. Please do not ask the reception staff to book these 20 min appointments if you have been recommended a 30 min appointment as your care will be compromised due to limited time.

Hygiene appointments (20 or 30 minutes), include the following:

• Meet and greet.

• Update medical history.

• The actual cleaning treatment itself.

• Writing the notes.

• Cleaning the surgery for the next patient.

All of these things are carried out within the parameters of the appointment slot and as such your treatment will not be done for the whole duration of the appointment time that you have booked.

We can now offer 20 min hygiene appointments which cost £60 or 30 minute appointments which cost £80. We may ask to take a payment in advance for these appointments which is the norm at all dental practices, however we do ask you to be considerate when cancelling your appointment. We require 48 hours notice to cancel all appointments, this allows us to offer the space to someone else, if less than 48 hours notice is given, you will be charged for the surgery time that was reserved for you. Please do not abuse staff or the system as this is to ensure that our self employed hygienist do not lose earnings.

All cleaning is done using the ultrasonic machines with a polish afterwards.  We have  installed air exchange extractor fans in each surgery, which we have paid £1000s for. This is to ensure that all patients can be treated in a safe environment. We have not passed any of these costs onto our patients.

If you require any further information about this, please discuss with your hygienist or a member of staff. This protocol has been created to ensure the safety of all of our patients, for staff working at the practice and the wider community.

Seeing the hygienist is a choice, if you do not wish to see her please do not book an appointment, have this treatment and then be abusive to staff because you were not entirely satisfied with the times or cost. We will not tolerate this type of behaviour and will remove you from our list.

Our hygienists are self employed and work incredibly hard to provide these services so please be respectful of the extra costs to our surgery and the extra mental and physical strain that we are putting ourselves under to provide these services.