Plymouth city centre is to get a facility where aspiring dentists and dental therapists will treat patients in urgent need of dental care.

Over the coming months, and subject to planning permission being granted, it will be revamped through a £5million project and become home to the new Peninsula Dental Education Practice.

Two floors of the building will be remodelled into treatment and consultation spaces, complete with state-of-the-art equipment and facilities and employing sustainable practices such as digital dentistry.

Once complete, it will offer appointments and an oral surgery service. This will enable up to 16 final-year students from the University’s Peninsula Dental School to work alongside specialists and other qualified clinicians to provide urgent care to patients who do not have a regular NHS dentist and have presented with pain, infection and trauma.

The new practice will go some way to filling the huge demand for dental care in Plymouth, with long waiting lists across all NHS providers and a lack of practitioners to meet the demand.