A new dental school in the South West and 100 new permanent places for dental students in England have been given the go-ahead. The new dental school will be at the multi-campus Peninsula Medical School, a partnership between the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth and the NHS within Devon and Cornwall. The 100 new dental training places will be spread across three parts of the country. The new Peninsula dental school, with bases in Plymouth, Exeter and Truro, will have places for 62 graduate entry students per year. A joint bid from the universities of Liverpool, Central Lancashire, Lancaster and St Martin's College for dental education in Cumbria and Lancashire will take an extra 32 graduate entry places, and six places will be awarded to the University of Leeds to establish an outreach centre in Hull. Historically, Cornwall, Lancashire and Hull have all had significantly fewer dentists than the national average. Health Minister, Rosie Winterton, said: 'Although we have helped these areas with the recruitment of dentists from overseas, providing facilities for training dentists in these areas offers the best prospect of an enduring solution to these recruitment problems.'

The British Dental Association welcomed the announcement of new training places. 'The BDA has campaigned hard for extra training places for dental students and we're glad to see that we've been listened to,' said Martin Fallowfield, chair of the BDA's executive board. 'Today's announcement will help address the shortage of dentists in the UK. This is good news for the many patients who find it difficult to get dental care, though obviously the impact on this problem of today's news will not be immediate.'