UNTREATED toothache will soon be a thing of the past for up to 12,000 people.

Health officials are to pump £1.3 million into creating two new dental practices in areas of Stoke-on-Trent with the worst tooth decay.

The primary care trust will next month seek tenders for two contracts worth £650,000 each for a total of eight dentists to start work possibly by autumn.

But the PCT will first hold public consultations over where the new surgeries should be and what sort of services should be available.

It is also making additional cash available for existing dentists to accept more patients from a wider area.

Following research to identify neighbourhoods where the fewest number of residents have access to a NHS dentist, one of the new practices will serve Hartshill, Penkhull, Stoke and Trent Vale, while the other is to cover Berry Hill, Bentilee and the Joiner's Square area of Hanley.

The news was welcomed by health watchdogs and leaders of the profession who revealed there was such a scarcity of dentists at present, some people were turning in desperation to A&E to try and sooth their toothache.

Clare Banks, secretary of the 120-stong North Staffordshire Local Dental Committee, said: "With only just over half of Stoke-on-Trent people currently having a dentist this is a godsend and will do a great deal to level up some of the inequalities suffered in the city.

"The PCT deserves great credit for addressing this big need and I feel sure there will be national corporate bodies willing to take on this work. It should also be praised for what it is trying to do for dental health promotion with parents and schools.

"I just hope existing local dentists are also given a break and continue to be funded to take on extra patients as a mixture of the two is healthy. We are quite well-served locally for dental access centres for emergency cases, but we still have examples of patients having to visit their GP, or even turning up at A&E because they are in so much pain."

Last year the trust invested a million pounds in starting a new practice in Shelton for 7,000 patients in the area with the city's worst access in the city.

It enabled private firm Alchemy to open a surgery in a listed former GP practice in Queen Anne Street in November.

The council wards served by the two planned centres have the second and third worst access. Meanwhile in Tunstall, which is fourth in the list, existing dentists will be funded from summer to take on extra NHS patients.

Alby Walker, chairman of Stoke-on-Trent City Council's health scrutiny committee, said: "This is fantastic news. Difficulties getting a dentist is a common complaint. The last thing we need is people being forced to visit the hospital which already has enough problems."