Which areas will see fluoride added to water? What's happening in the US?

The government says that expansion of the programme across the north east will reach an extra 1.6 million people. It is hoped this reduce the number of tooth extractions due to decay, particularly in deprived areas.

This expansion was first mooted in the Dentistry Recovery Plan in February last year, and will now be put into action.

Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral found in water and some foods. In the early 20th century, researchers found that people had less tooth decay in areas with higher fluoride levels in the drinking water.

Many areas have enough naturally occurring fluoride in drinking water. In other parts of the country levels are manually adjusted as part of a fluoridation scheme. UK schemes involving adding fluoride to water date back to the 1960s, starting in the Midlands.

Around 10 per cent of people in England currently have fluoride added to their drinking water, mostly in the West Midlands and the North East, including Newcastle and Gateshead.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) confirmed that, following public consultation last year, the Government will press ahead with the expansion of community water fluoridation across the north east of England.

This will be the first significant expansion of water fluoridation in England since the 1980s. Around half of the north east already has fluoridated water.

The consultation proposed that the programme should expand across the region to Darlington; Durham; Gateshead; Hartlepool; Middlesbrough; Newcastle; Northumberland; North Tyneside; Redcar and Cleveland; South Tyneside; Stockton and Sunderland.

“The findings of all health monitoring reports since 2014 consistently show that water fluoridation is an effective and safe public health measure to reduce the prevalence and severity of tooth decay and reduce dental health inequalities,” DHSC said in a statement.

A review examining the benefit of such schemes, which was published in October, concluded the benefits of fluoridating water supplies appear to have declined since the 1970s when fluoride toothpaste became widely available in the UK.

Overall, water fluoridation “may lead to slightly more children being free of tooth decay” and “may lead to slightly less tooth decay in children’s baby teeth”, according to the updated Cochrane Review.

The news comes as the government launched its national supervised toothbrushing campaign across the most deprived areas of England.

Commenting, Eddie Crouch, chairman of the British Dental Association, said: “Water fluoridation has been around since the Second World War. Supervised brushing since Victorian times. Tried and tested policies, but it shows we need real pace here.

“Building an NHS dental service fit for the future won’t wait till the 22nd Century.”

Dr Urshla Devalia, spokeswoman for the British Society of Paediatric Dentistry, said: “At last, we will see the dial shift on children’s oral health in England. BSPD has been advocating for the importance of a preventative approach to address the crisis in children’s oral health for years. Intervening now with a supervised toothbrushing scheme, plus community water fluoridation programmes, are initiatives proven to deliver beneficial oral health outcomes that will pay for themselves severalfold in the future.”

Last November, the now United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr said one of his first acts in a new Trump administration would be to “advise all US water systems to remove fluoride from public water.”

Donald Trump appeared receptive to the idea - but there has not been any update since his accession to the White House.