GDC Plans for 2025
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- Published: Friday, 17 January 2025 04:32
- Written by Peter Ingle
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Lord Toby Harris may be stepping down as GDC Chair later this year, but his preview of the council‘s plans for 2025 remains relevant to all registrants. In terms of recent GDC chairs he is by far the ‘biggest beast‘ arriving with a long record of senior public service roles. Indeed, a stated reason for declining the usual second term as GDC chair, is that there are increasing demands upon his time from the new Labour government.
As someone successfully involved in politics for over half a century it is no surprise that after observing that the start of the year is a traditional time for either looking back or looking ahead, he has chosen to look ahead, rather than reflect upon the GDC’s performance in 2024.
In September 2025 there will be 3 vacancies on the Council, including his own role as Chair. Lord Harris observes that this is “always an opportunity to seek a diverse pool of candidates,” and he encourages “anyone with an interest in dental regulation to consider the roles.”
February 1st sees new guidance on reporting matters to the GDC and brings together all reporting obligations, including health, criminal, and regulatory matters.
February 6th sees the end date of the GDC consultation into revised standards for education. This is important work that aims to introduce new areas relevant to today’s dental education landscape, and its products.
The GDC is working on revised Scope of Practice guidance. It received considerable feedback including that from professional associations and indemnifiers. This has been reviewed and there have been meetings with those that provided feedback on specific issues within the guidance.
Lord Harris then moves on to, “Continuing to improve Fitness to Practise (FtP).” He asserts that: “Improving FtP processes wherever we can remains a firm priority for the GDC. We know that investigations take a long time and can cause stress and anxiety. Changes made in recent years help, and we have firm plans in place to do more.”
The GDC will continue to review decision-making guidance to improve proportionality, fairness and consistency in fitness to practise outcomes. The comment that “Updated Guidance for the Interim Orders Committee took effect last year” fails to add any context on the tragic circumstances that led to these changes being requested by a Coroner.
Also in the realm of FtP, this year the GDC will publish the outcome of its consultation on guidance for practice committees which closed in September 2024, and look at possible case management improvements that they can make in 2025.
There is something of a groundhog day quality to two paragraphs in particular:
“Plans are in development to improve the communication and practical support offered to those who participate in investigations and hearings. We are mindful of the need to consider the wider context and impacts of investigations, such as issues relating to employment, and that feelings of stress and anxiety are likely to be experienced from the moment a dental professional has been notified that an investigation has been opened.”
“We are also committed to learning from any death that occurs while concerns are being investigated or remediated. We are exploring serious incident review processes and we want to be able to identify any opportunities for learning quickly, and have a process in place that ensures any resulting recommendations are implemented and reviewed. Any review process needs to have the family, friends and colleagues of the dental professionals involved at the centre. The aim is to listen to those who have been affected and take steps to reduce the risk of harm.”
Along with FtP, the GDC has struggled with its core role of registration, often receiving criticism from the PSA on this. Lord Harris writes that the GDC will continue its work to improve registration performance. “Joining the register is one of the most significant moments in a dental professional’s career, and we take our responsibility here very seriously.”
For candidates who qualified outside the UK, the procurement exercise to find suppliers and increased capacity for the Overseas Registration Examination (ORE) is approaching the final stages. The outcome should be announced in the Spring, and the GDC has committed to keeping ORE candidates fully informed of what this means for them. Council had recently decided to approve a policy to provide eligible candidates with refugee status priority access to book a place on the ORE.
In May, the GDC will bring forward proposals for consultation on its Corporate Strategy from 2026 to 2028. This is will set the direction and priorities for dental professional regulation, as well as providing the basis for setting the level of the Annual Retention Fee (ARF) over the strategy period.
Lord Harris refers to the need for legislative reform as an enabler of better regulation, the lack of which is often given by the GDC as the reason for its inability to make what appear to be reasonable changes.
He concludes: “Our priority remains the same – to ensure that our approach to regulation protects patients and supports dental professionals. Central to our strategy will be close working with partners and stakeholder organisations to build trust in effective regulation and achieve a goal that we all share, which is patient safety and public confidence in the dental professions.”
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