Edinburgh dentist makes second extension bid at Comely Bank Dental to cope with growing demand
An Edinburgh dental surgery has applied for a second time to extend the building to cope with growing patient demand.
Comely Bank Dental at Comely Bank Road has applied to the City of Edinburgh Council for planning permission to extend the existing dental practice with a rear single storey extension on the ground floor.
The practice currently has around 4,500 patients and the owner believes building this new extension with an extra room could add 2,000 more patients. Comely Bank Dental would also hire another dentist to its existing three dentists and one hygienist if the plans submitted this month are approved.
Comely Bank Dental owner Davinder Kalsi explained that this extension is essential to allow the practice to cope with growing demand, with dozens of potential new patients calling daily.
He said: “There is a bit of a crisis in our industry, there is just no access to care for people at the moment. The difficulty in the cities is you can’t see enough people that need to be seen. And in more rural places there are no places available for patients. So nobody can get an appointment in both.
“We can all see it in our industry, I have a few practices and we struggle at each one to see people. There aren’t enough dentists.
“It’s the same problem across the whole country, it’s a much bigger problem than people realise generally. But patients understand.
“The number of patients we get phoning each day to register just keeps going up, it’s now about 20 or 30 a day, so we have looked at how we can increase capacity.
“Even if we took say 60 new patients a week we couldn’t cope. But if we build this extension we estimate we could take an extra 2,000 patients and hire another dentist. It would make a huge difference.
“I currently have lots of people who want to work for us, as we are in the centre of Edinburgh.”
This is the second time Comely Bank Dental has applied for planning permission to extend the premises after the last application for planning permission was rejected.
Davinder added: “This time we have changed the design and size of the extension. So we have gone for a new design, with exactly the same stone and roof as the existing building.
“Although this extension would help for now, it’s probably not enough long-term as we keep getting so many new patients looking to register, so much so that we pretty much have one person dealing with those requests.
“But we have to do whatever we can do as there is just enough people getting seen by a dentist in Edinburgh. We don’t to lower the level of service by just taking more patients on.
“We want to maintain the quality while seeing more patients. So we need this extension as soon as possible.
“We would have liked to add two rooms but we had to revise our original plans. We have looked at other options including taking on another building across the road, but that wouldn’t be able to provide the service we want to provide.
“We have to keep pushing for an extension here, it’s just a matter of how long it will take. It’s just seemed like there is a barrier to expanding the practice.
“We are hopeful we can work with the council and get these latest plans approved. We want to have conversations with the council to take this forward.”
The dental surgery owner also pointed to a recent event which hit the industry: “We have lost a lot of high skilled dentists, and high skilled staff in health care generally after Brexit. It has left a massive void in all health services,” said Davinder.