Why can’t I get an NHS dentist?

After a year, she said she thought the pressure was now even greater and that we were “hanging on by a thread”.

She said: “(We want) to be part of a force for good, as the NHS is intended to be, but there will be a tipping point and we came very, very close to that.

“There is a very real risk of bankruptcy within the NHS and of course that means I have to make very difficult decisions about the future of the practice.

“It’s very difficult to be able to sleep at night not knowing if I’m going to have the funding to stay open or pay the staff or take care of patients the way we’re trained to take care of them.”

BDA chairman Eddie Crouch said “we are probably at the worst point of NHS dentistry we have ever seen” at the moment.

He said: “This general election is quite essential to make the service something that will survive into the future.”

So what do political parties offer?

BBC South West political editor Martyn Oates said there had been broad agreement for 15 years on the main action needed, which was to reform the contract which did not pay dentists properly for the work they did for the NHS .

The current contract was introduced by the last Labor government but ended before the 2010 general election saying it had made a mistake and needed to change.

The current government’s long-awaited dental recovery plan, published earlier this year, stopped short of this fundamental reform.

The BDA condemned the plan as “unworthy of the title” and said “failure to embrace fundamental reform of NHS dentistry risks condemning a generation to decay and increasing inequality in oral health”.

The Tories said their plan could see up to 2.5 million extra NHS dental appointments delivered for patents through measures including increased minimum payments for NHS work, one-off financial incentives for some NHS dentists and the launch of dental treatment vans in areas rural.

Labor has pledged to reform the national dental contract and provide an extra 700,000 urgent dental appointments.

The party said it would provide incentives for new dentists in areas of greatest need and shift the focus to prevention so that, in the long term, everyone who needs NHS dentistry can access it.

Liberal Democrat policy is to reform the dental contract and increase funding for the NHS dental contract, plus increase the number of dental training places in the UK.

The Lib Dems have also said they will scrap VAT on toothbrushes and children’s toothpaste.

The Greens have said they will give everyone access to an NHS dentist through their pledge to spend extra on health and social care, reaching more than £50 billion a year by 2030.

Healthcare policies announced so far by Reform UK include zero basic income tax for frontline health and social care staff and 20% tax breaks for all health services and independent insurance.