In February 2024, hundreds of people queued from early morning when St Pauls Dental Practice in Bristol opened registration for new NHS patients. The Guardian reported that about 1,500 people were registered in two days. Carol Sherman arrived at 5 a.m. Sisi Hussein joined at 8 a.m. with roughly forty people ahead of her and completed registration at 1 p.m., after five hours.
On the first day, another prospective patient had waited three hours when an altercation led police to send people home. The practice introduced a ticket system the next day, allowing Rose Robinson to register in about thirty minutes. This was not merely a queue for a popular clinic: access to an NHS dentist had itself become scarce. The contrast between the two days also showed how strongly the design of a queue can alter the burden of the same unmet demand.