Dentist Registrants Up 3%
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- Published: Wednesday, 15 January 2025 11:17
- Written by Peter Ingle
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There is some good workforce news. Following the registration renewal period for dentists, the GDC reports that the total number of dentists has risen by 3%. The morning after removals, there were 45,580 dentists on the Register representing a 3.10% increase when compared to the same time in 2024.
After accounting for the 793 dentists who did not renew their registration there are now 1,371 more dentists on the register. The leavers figure has dropped from 1004 in 2024.
The GDC note that there are issues of concern around access and recruitment in some areas and the latest data does not give any information on working patterns or the ratio of NHS and private commitments. Nor does it differentiate between active clinicians such as GDPs providing the majority of care to the public, and those who deliver little or no treatment.
As in 2024 the GDC have asked renewing registrants to provide information to answer some of these questions. This was a new feature of the renewal process last year and remains voluntary.
That further information on working patterns is to be published later in the 1st quarter. It is not clear how much of last year’s data has fed into high level decision making, such as workforce planning or commissioning patterns.
As reported in GDPUK in this article there are questions about the quality of the information that the GDC are analysing. Those looking at the working patterns data might want to consider how much better poor data is than no data. Despite the limitations of the GDCs data they hope that it will, “help inform workforce discussions and planning.”
Historically, workforce planning for dentistry in the UK has been a rollercoaster of expanding places on BDS courses, finding an oversupply of dentists, closing dental schools, facing access problems, opening more dental schools, and importing dentists from overseas.
The ‘production’ of UK dentists has never been reliably synchronised with other changes in the sector such as population changes, patterns of demand, or NHS funding.
It might seem fanciful now, but the UK could face an oversupply of dentists in a few years. We are at the dawn of a shift to skill mix, the gradual collapse of NHS dentistry into a de facto emergency and urgent care service, more dental schools opening, and a resumption of large scale arrivals of overseas dentists.
Meanwhile those on the register may remain on it for longer. One aspect of the latest figures was the reduction in those leaving the register. It has averaged 2.5% over the previous four years. This time it was 1.7%. This may reflect that the pool of practice owners able to sell up and retire relatively early is now drying up. With later iterations of the NHS pension scheme becoming less generous, that too, may result in dentists working for longer.
Even in the depths of an access crisis it is possible to envisage the UK, like Portugal, becoming a net exporter of dentists
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