The General Dental Council (GDC) met 16 out of 18 Standards of Good Regulation in 2024/25, falling short on equality, diversity and inclusion and fitness to practise (FtP) timeliness.
The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) review for 2024/25 found that the GDC met standards in areas including registration and education and training.
However, the PSA said it was ‘concerned’ about the GDC’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), though it recognised that the regulator had made improvements such as publishing a clear EDI action plan.
The PSA said: ‘We remain concerned about the extent to which the GDC currently requires education and training providers to demonstrate that they are preparing students to provide appropriate care to all patients, and the extent to which providers take appropriate account of diverse student needs.
‘By the end of the review period there continued to be a lack of explicit references to discriminatory behaviour in fitness to practise guidance, and council and committee members had not yet received EDI training.’
Despite measures such as the introduction of an initial enquiries process to improve FtP timeliness, the PSA said ‘it is taking too long to deal with fitness to practise cases’.
The number of cases older than three years had increased in 2024/5, which the GDC said was due to ‘awaiting third-party decisions including court dates in criminal prosecutions, outcomes of criminal proceedings, or conclusions of police investigations’. The regulator said it plans to increase hearing capacity from five to seven per day from January 2026 to improve timeliness.
‘We acknowledge the areas where further work is needed’
The regulator highlighted several areas that had shown improvement this year. For example, clearing the backlog of overseas dental care professional (DCP) applications. The GDC said this had impacted its performance in registration in recent years.
Tom Whiting, chief executive and registrar of the GDC, said: ‘We are pleased that the PSA has recognised our strong performance across 16 out of 18 standards, particularly our achievements in registration and education and training, where we met all standards.
‘We acknowledge the areas where further work is needed and remain committed to embedding equality, diversity and inclusion across all our regulatory activities while actively working to address the concerns raised about our fitness to practise timeliness.’
The year marks the third performance review in which the GDC has met 16 out of 18 standards.
Last year, the GDC fell short in the same areas of FtP timeliness and EDI. In 2023, the unmet standards were registration processing and FtP timeliness.
The full performance review can be found here.
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