The government has announced plans to reform UK healthcare professional regulators – but has excluded the General Dental Council (GDC).
In a ministerial statement this week, the government confirmed its commitment to modernise the regulatory frameworks for the General Medical Council (GMC), the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Health and Care Professional Council.
These changes will enable faster, more flexible and less adversarial processes for addressing concerns about healthcare professionals, helping regulators act more efficiently to protect the public.
The GMC believes this reform is a ‘significant step towards creating legislation that better serves the needs of patients and the professionals we regulate, giving us the flexibility to respond more swiftly to patient safety risks and better support good practice’.
This comes as the GDC recently published its 2025 Costed Corporate Plan (CCP), detailing its workplan for the next three years. In the CCP, GDC chief executive and registrar Tom Whiting highlights the need for legislative reform to improve regulation in dentistry.
He said: ‘Restrictive legislation can be a barrier for regulation and dental professionals. While we will continue to press for legislative reform, we recognise that there is little prospect of this in the next few years. Even then, it will not resolve all of the issues faced by the professions.
‘Therefore, in our plans we are driving improvements where we can within our current legislation and constraints. At the same time, we will continue to support and empower the dental team to deliver safe and effective dental care to high standards of professionalism.’
‘Outdated legislation’
While it welcomes the government’s commitment to professional regulatory reform, Dental Protection is disappointed that the GDC ‘continues to be at the back of the queue’.
Raj Rattan is Dental Protection’s dental director. He said: ‘While we welcome the new government’s commitment to reforming healthcare professional regulation, we cannot help but note that successive governments have not prioritised substantive reform to dentistry legislation.
‘This week’s announcement confirms that GDC reform is at the back of the queue and presumably will not progress during this parliamentary term. We have been calling for GDC reform for some time, as the current framework continues to limit the regulator’s ability to efficiently carry out its functions.
‘In our 2023 survey of 125 dental professionals who have been investigated by the dental regulator, 82% said the process had a detrimental impact on their mental health. While the GDC still has scope to make significant improvements, reform to their outdated legislation could play a key role in further reducing delays to fitness to practise processes, as it could give the regulator greater discretion to not take forward investigations where allegations clearly do not require action.’
He adds: ‘GDC reform should not be an afterthought. We urge the government to find time to deliver this alongside planned reforms to other regulators.’
Neil Carmichael, executive chair of the Association of Dental Groups, said that ‘even the GDC wants reform’. He added: ‘It is extremely disappointing to hear that yet again dentistry is at the back of the healthcare queue. The last reform of the GDC was in 1984, updating its 1956 formation.
‘Meanwhile, dentistry has massively changed in the last 40 years. Ministers must have more control over workforce planning if they are to deliver their promises on NHS dentistry.’
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