HEALTH bosses have defended dental services in North Yorkshire - and claimed that queues are shortening.

The North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust said new services would be provided by next spring, and said the lengthy waiting list was getting smaller, with the latest figures showing that fewer than 4,000 people are on the database.

The PCT was commenting after The Press revealed yesterday how one patient had got so fed up waiting for an NHS dentist in York, that he travelled to London instead.

Craig McKibbin, 31, of Goodramgate, is making six return trips to the capital to receive root canal treatment.

He said the cost of the rail travel was cheaper than getting the work done privately, and said an emergency dentist in Monkgate had advised him to look for a dentist in Sheffield or London, rather than waiting here.

A spokesman said in response that under the emergency dental service, if a patient received treatment and was not registered with a dentist, they were advised to seek an NHS place and were given details of how to register in their local area.

"If they have recently moved to North Yorkshire or are here temporarily they will be asked if they have been, or are still with, a dental practice elsewhere in the UK," he added.

Speaking about general provision of services, he said: "North Yorkshire and York PCT is working closely with dental providers across the county to ensure that we can provide the best-quality NHS dental care for as many patients as possible.

"The recently introduced dental contracts have enabled us to target our resources more effectively and expansion plans have been agreed with dentists who have given a commitment to deliver NHS services in the future. We have already agreed significant growth in patient numbers with some of our existing dental practices and there are still approximately 8,000 of these places to deliver.

"We are also in the process of going out to tender to commission additional dental services and it is planned that these services will be in place by April 1, 2007.

"Since the dental database was created for the Selby and York area in September 2005, nearly 8,000 NHS places have been allocated. Nearly 3,000 of these have been allocated since the beginning of August.

"The latest figures available show that at the beginning of October 3,896 people were on the database list.

"The process of allocating patients to a particular dental practice takes some time as new patients cannot all be seen at once; so this is an ongoing process."