The practice I'm with offer a small number of slots each day for the more urgent cases. They are allocated on assessment of clinical priority and to try to get one of these slots you have to call each day at the opening time and go through the same rigmarole until you get lucky. Today I got lucky having tried unsucessfully every previous day of this week and I'm booked for 11.00. It won't be with my own dentist at the practice, you get whoever is available, and I gather that there is only one on duty today. It could be more expensive overall as only the job requiring the urgent treatment will be done, which I think will be just the one filling. Any other non-urgent work will require a separate appointment and will be charged as such whereas usually with a routine appointment qualifying treatments would be grouped together as one for charging and charged at the highest band.
I can't see the waiting list getting any better as things are here atm. Last couple of years in particular there has been a noticeable change in the appearance and the size of the local demographics.
