Over a quarter of people can’t get a dentist appointment while many say the service is poor.

The NHS GP Patient Survey has found that 29 per cent of people in Sussex could not obtain an appointment with an NHS dentist in the last two years, with 10 per cent reporting no appointments were available while 12 per cent were told the dentist wasn’t taking new patients.

The bleak figures do not stop there, with one in five of those who could secure appointments reporting the service was fairly or very poor.

Louise Ansarie, chief executive of Healthwatch England, an independent organisation that collects public feedback on health and social care, said: “At the moment, dentists are not obliged to keep patients on permanently, which affects continuity of care, while the payment model for dentists does not incentivise them to offer fully preventative care to patients."

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Nationally, 5.6 million adults, a quarter of the population, can not access an NHS dentist, say the British Dental Association.

Eddie Crouch, chairman of the British Dental Association, said: “Many have simply given up trying.

“We're still seeing sights like 'DIY' dentistry that belong in the Victorian era. None of these horrors are inevitable, and the new government can turn the page.

“Over a decade of underfunding and failed contracts has brought us here. A problem made in Westminster can be fixed in Westminster."

Dr Becks Fisher, director of research at Nuffield Trust, said: “The survey results are deeply troubling.

“The new government needs to build on the recent promising talks with dentists to deliver the reform of the contract they have promised – a contract which has failed dentists and patients for nearly twenty years.”

A spokesman for the department of health and social care said: “There are large parts of the country where NHS dentistry barely exists anymore.

"We will rebuild NHS dentistry, starting with an extra 700,000 emergency dentistry appointments. We will also reform the dental contract to encourage more dentists to offer NHS services to patients.

"Prevention is better than cure, so we will also introduce supervised tooth brushing for three to five-year-olds. These changes are fundamental to us building an NHS that is fit for the future."