The General Dental Council (GDC) received 1,766 new fitness to practise concerns in 2025, a 26% increase on the previous year.
The rise was particularly marked among dental care professionals, with concerns relating to dentists increasing by 21% and concerns relating to dental care professionals rising by 45%.
However, the number of dental professionals erased from the register remained unchanged at 18, representing 0.01% of all dental professionals on the register at the beginning of 2025.
The figures were published in the GDC’s Fitness to Practise Statistical Report 2025, which included expanded analysis of case types, outcomes, timelines and equality, diversity and inclusion data.
In the foreword, Theresa Thorp, executive director, regulation at the GDC, acknowledged that fitness to practise investigations can take too long and feel overly complex. She said this can lead to ‘feelings of mistrust, unfairness and more widely, fear of the process and of the General Dental Council’, as well as negatively affecting mental health and wellbeing.
Orthodontics and examinations top clinical concerns
At the end of 2025, 761 cases were open at the assessment stage, with 58% relating to purely clinical issues.
The most common clinical area was orthodontics, while the most common issue was the standard of the examination that took place.
For open clinical cases at assessment stage, the most common allegations were:
- Examination: 37%
- Orthodontics: 15%
- Fillings: 14%
- Extractions: 12%
- Not following current evidence and best practice: 11%.
Conduct also featured strongly at later stages. The report said 60% of allegations before initial practice committee hearings in 2025 related to registrants’ conduct.
More hearings, but erasures remain unchanged
More cases moved into the later stages of the process during 2025. Case examiners referred 275 registrants to a practice committee hearing, up from 198 in 2024.
Initial practice committee hearings rose from 73 in 2024 to 110 in 2025, while initial Interim Orders Committee hearings increased from 99 to 149.
Despite this increase, erasures remained unchanged at 18.
| Registrant type | Number erased |
|---|---|
| Dentists | 9 |
| Dental nurses | 6 |
| Dental nurse, dental therapist and dental hygienist | 1 |
| Dental technician | 1 |
| Dental technician and clinical dental technician | 1 |
Assessment delays still stretch to 78 weeks
The report highlighted continuing delays at the assessment stage, where the average time to completion rose from 76 working weeks in 2024 to 78 working weeks in 2025.
However, there was improvement once cases moved beyond assessment. The average time between an assessment decision and a final case examiner decision fell from 50 working weeks in 2024 to 36 working weeks in 2025.
The GDC also said its streamlined approach for single patient clinical concerns had almost halved the time taken to complete the assessment stage for those cases, from 30 to 16 weeks.
EDI data raises further questions
For the first time, the report included expanded equality, diversity and inclusion analysis, including breakdowns by ethnicity at different stages of the fitness to practise process.
Dentists of Asian or Asian British ethnicity made up 31% of the dentist register and accounted for 36% of new fitness to practise concerns in 2025. Dentists of White ethnicity made up 46% of the register and accounted for 35% of new concerns.
Among dental care professionals, those of Asian or Asian British ethnicity made up 12% of the register and accounted for 19% of new concerns. DCPs of White ethnicity made up 73% of the register and accounted for 62% of new concerns.
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