MERSEYSIDE is to get around £1.6m to plug huge gaps in dental service provision, as fears grow that the number of NHS practices switching to private plans will snowball.

The Department of Health has allocated £44m nationally in a bid to curb massive shortages anticipated because of radical changes to the way dentistry is funded, due to take effect in April, 2005.

Last night, Cheshire and Merseyside Strategic Health Authority (SHA) confirmed it has allocated a £28,000 emergency grant to recruit an extra dentist at one practice in Formby.

It comes after hundreds of patients were left without cover when a neighbouring surgery went private last month.

The Health and Social Care Bill, currently passing through Parliament, will place dental funding in the hands of local Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), which will allocate funding according to patient need.

It has left many overworked dentists attracted to private schemes, which charge patients around £17 a month, and provide individual surgeries with better financial security and control.

Health managers in Merseyside last night said they are "hopeful", but not entirely confident, that the new government funding will encourage more practices to stay with the NHS.

Last night, Dr Nicholas Palmer, secretary of Sefton Local Dental Committee, said he expects the number of dentists quitting the NHS to snowball unless the PCTs negotiate a favourable contract for 2005.

He said: "The problem is we don't know what the terms of the new contract are going to be.

"The fear is that they will ask us to take on more patients and improve quality without any extra money, and that is not going to be possible. We are already working flat out just to cover our basic workload.

"There is already a massive shortage in the number of NHS dentists. We are seeing around 30 or 40 patients a day, but private dentists see about half that.

"At the moment, a lot of dentists are sitting tight, but if the contracts are not favourable many of them will decide the only way they can offer a quality service is to go private."

Already, at least three out of 17 NHS practices in Sefton have gone private in the last six months, including surgeries in Crosby, Formby and Old Roan.

A similar pattern is emerging across the rest of the country and Mersey region.

Cheshire and Merseyside is one of 28 Strategic Health Authorities in Britain all expecting to get a share of the government's £44m personal dental services pilot scheme ( PDS), to be announced in late December.

A DoH spokeswoman said: "In the short term, we are allocating £9m to target areas that are hardest pushed in terms of shortages.

"A further £35m is intended to improve access to services. It will be up to each Strategic Health Authority how they distribute that money through their PCTs."

John Green is manager for the NHS's Personal Dental Services pilot scheme, which allows dentists to try working under new conditions if they agree to stay with the NHS.

So far, 100 practices have signed up nationwide, including one in Seaforth due to be announced later this month.

Mr Green said: "We are finding that once dentists sign up they find it a very positive arrangement and are happy to stay with the NHS.

"The aim is to shift the funding in 2005 from a situation where dentists are paid per treatment, to focus on more preventative oral care, which they don't do now."

Last night, Gary Lucking, of Cheshire and Merseyside SHA, said: "We don't know yet how much of the £9m additional support funding we will be getting, but as far as we know at this stage we are getting some.

"The funding has been secured specifically to improve access to dental services in south Cheshire, which has been identified as one of the areas facing substantial challenges.

"This funding will be used to tackle the situation by securing more NHS dental provision which could be done through supporting recruitment, capital investment or to secure additional NHS dental provision through either independent or salaried contracts with dentists.

"A further £35m is being shared out nationally in the near future and that will be used to enhance dental provision.

"Again we won't make a definitive decision on what or where that allocation will be spent until the amount has been confirmed."