MP David Lidington visited Stokenchurch Dental to show his support for their campaign to bring NHS services to the village.

Mr Lidington dropped into the dental clinic on Monday evening to discuss the next steps in the fight to bring NHS dental services to Stokenchurch.

After Stokenchurch Dental opened last year, owners Manu and Smitha Pillai went about trying to offer NHS dental services to the community, but were “outright refused” by the Primary Care Trust because the majority of the village population were heading to High Wycombe for their dental services.

Mr Pillai said: “Before we went about opening the practice, we tried to secure a contract and we were outright refused. We told them there are 8,000 people in the community and they don’t have access the NHS services here and we feel really strongly about that.

“They put together some outdated stats which in their own view meant that having to travel to High Wycombe was fine enough for now.

“Their population numbers were based on figures from 2003 and yes people are going to High Wycombe dentists, but not because they want to, because they have to.

“The people in this community would benefit massively from having NHS services here and that’s the bottom line.”

After Mr and Mrs Pillai sent a petition with 140 signatures on it to Mr Lidington, he has since joined the campaign, sending out his own survey to residents in Stokenchurch, Studley Green, Ibstone, Lane End and Radnage to get their views.

At the meeting on Monday, Mr Lidington explained that the results of the survey showed that a “staggering” 33% of households want NHS services in the village and now they can discuss the next steps to drive the campaign forward.

Mr Pillai said: “33% is a high number for this sort of thing. It’s a staggering number, so Mr Lidington is going to approach the local area team again to tell them that people are very keen on this and what can we do to get this implemented.

“We want to drive some sentiment across the community because every little bit of support will help.”

Mr Lidington vowed to write to the local area team to push for a meeting to discuss the possibility of them being able to offer NHS services.

Mr Lidington said: “I want to continue to say to the local area team, let’s sit down and talk about this, because once they’ve written a letter that says no then that starts to become a preference, so let’s push for this meeting.

“I cannot see any good, objective reason why they're not letting it happen. There is strong support for it in the village and you could stand to lose out by not being able to offer this service.

“We’ve got a Stokenchurch dental practice willing to offer NHS services and it is just bureaucracy stopping it from happening.”