An extra £3 million is to be ploughed into dental services in parts of the county.

The Eastern and Coastal Kent PCT has recognised a shortfall in dental provision and will be stepping up the number of dental contracts in Ashford, Canterbury and Sittingbourne.

It is advertising for extra dentists in those areas and in Dover, Broadstairs, Cliftonville, Eastchurch, Folkestone, and Whitstable.

The news follows statistics, revealed under the Freedom of Information Act, showing that dentists across the county are failing to fulfill their NHS targets.

Dentists contracted by the Eastern and Coastal Kent PCT have one of the worst rates of according to figures obtained by DPAS, a company that provides payment plans for dentists.

Those contracted by West Kent Primary Care Trust fair better but are still not delivering the treatment targets they have been set.

Dentists with Eastern and Coastal PCT had 200,000 Units of Dental of Activity (UDAs) – the measure assigned to treatment delivered by dentists - unused within their contracts from 2007-2008.

That’s the equivalent of more than 18 percent of the total, or £4.6 million, of dental treatment commissioned by the trust .

West Kent Primary Care Trust had four percent of its UDA's undelivered - a total of £700,000 worth of treatment.

Bill Millar, Assistant Director of Primary Care for NHS West Kent, said: “The figure of 96 per cent is way above the national average and a significant improvement on last year, but there is always room for improvement.

“We will continue to work closely with those practices who have fallen below their target to try and reduce that figure even further.

“Three new dental contracts have been awarded in the past few months and it is expected that further contracts will be awarded early in the New Year.”

DPAS chairman, Quentin Skinner has called the figures alarming and believes that dentists will be forced to work harder next year to make up some of the lost UDAs.

He said: "For those dentists who fell rather shorter of the mark, the future for them in the NHS certainly looks bleak.

“Inevitably, these dentists will have to agree to a mixture of increased workloads for less money.”

UDA factfile

• NHS dentists are paid by the number of 'Units of Dental Activity' they do in a year.

• One UDA is worth between £15 to £25 and include simple treatments undertaken by dentists, including check ups, radiographs, etc.

• More complex treatments like fillings or extractions are worth three UDAs and the most time consuming work, such as dentures are worth ten UDAs.

• Unfortunately for dentists though, only the summary of treatments are counted when working out UDAs, so if a dentist carries out six fillings on one person they are still only given three UDAs.