UPDATED: Confirmed - dentist up for sale and statement from {my}Dentist here...

Hadeligh's last remaining NHS dentist is set to close at the end of this month.

Patients at {My}Dentist in Meadow Way, Hadleigh, have been told the practice is up for sale and the NHS provision will end on December 28.

{My}Dentist is used by NHS patients from Hadleigh and the surrounding villages who will need to register elsewhere, unless the new practitioners accept current users.

The next nearest NHS dentist taking on new patients is the Orwell Dental Surgery, on Nacton Road Ipswich.

NHS dental provision campaigners Toothless in Suffolk have called on the government to provide more dentists and not force patients to pay for expensive private treatment.

Mark Jones, Toothless in Suffolk coordinator, said: "Hadleigh residents, alongside those living in most other parts of Suffolk, will feel betrayed by a system that they are paying for but which has resulted in them losing their NHS dental practice.

"Years of underfunding and a lack of investment in boosting the numbers of trained dentists offering NHS services has dragged the service back to the nineteenth century, with thousands of people in the county living with excruciating pain or who have had to resort to extracting their own teeth.

"It doesn't have to be this way and Toothless in England, which began in Suffolk, is building into a formidable grassroots campaign.

"We invite the good citizens of Hadleigh to join us in this vital battle to remove oral health inequalities from our society."

For further information: go to the Toothless in Suffolk Facebook page here.

{My}Dentist has been approached for comment but have failed to respond.