A New Plymouth dental practice's desire to give back to the community is no April Fool's Day prank.

On Friday morning, Happy Teeth Dental Practice will offer treatments for $1 from its Devon St West premises.

While the price may seem to good to be true, it is definitely no joke according to practice manager John Dowker.

Robert Charles/FAIRFAX NZ The Happy Teeth team are gearing up for Friday's walk in clinic, which is offering $1 treatments. L-R; John Dowker, Jasmine Hodson and Rebekah Cave.

"The idea is that people who wouldn't normally come in for dental treatment or had a niggle they were dealing with, would take advantage of treatment at a low cost," Dowker said.

Dowker said he hoped the cut price cost would encourage people to come in for a check up and get an idea of the true state of their teeth.

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He said often people waited until an emergency cropped up before they sought dental treatment.

"They'll sit with broken teeth, little niggles, pain, things like that," Dowker said.

But he hoped to get the message across that being proactive about looking after your pearly whites was friendlier on the wallet in the long run.

"You'll spend a lot less getting routine dental care rather than just trouble-shooting," he said.

All treatments that can be completed in one session will be offered between 9am-12pm, including extractions or fillings, but cleaning or denture work will not be available.

Dowker said it was a bit of an unknown at this stage how many people will turn up to take advantage of the gold coin treatment and just how many people the dentist will be able to see.

"It's the first time we've done something like this," he said.

"It's very, very difficult to guess, there's no fixed number.

"A person may take five minutes, a person might take 30 minutes," Dowker said.

Dowker knew of other practices which have offered a similar cut price session and that potential patients had camped out overnight in order to secure a spot at the front of the queue.

"I would hope Taranaki is a bit more of an affluent area and we don't have people who are struggling to pay for dental treatment but you never know," he said.

The first in, first served clinic runs from 9am-12pm on Friday at the Happy Teeth Dental Practice on 21 Devon St West, New Plymouth.