PSA annual performance review recognises GDC progress and challenges
The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) has today published its annual review of the General Dental Council’s (GDC’s) performance. The GDC met 16 out of 18 Standards of Good Regulation for 2023/24, and has made significant improvements to achieve the standards in registration, without meeting the standards for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and fitness to practise timeliness.
The GDC successfully met the Standards for registration this year, reducing the backlog of overseas-qualified dentists who had applied to join the register as a dental care professional, significantly. The backlog of unworked applications which stood at 5,700 in April 2023 following a change in legislation has now been eliminated, with all remaining applications scheduled to undertake a panel assessment by April 2025. Other key achievements highlighted in the review included reducing the average processing time for UK graduate registration to two weeks, enhanced support systems for those involved in fitness to practise investigations and strengthened stakeholder engagement.
Tom Whiting, Chief Executive of the GDC, said:
"We welcome the PSA's recognition of our progress across multiple areas, particularly in registration, while acknowledging there is more work to do. We remain firmly committed to improving fitness to practise processes and implementing our EDI strategy.
“Our priority is ensuring we deliver effective regulation that protects patients and supports dental professionals. We welcome 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.”
The PSA commended the GDC's work in seeking and acting on feedback from diverse stakeholder groups and its commitment to evidence-based policy development. It recognised the regulator’s efforts to improve communication with registrants during fitness to practise investigations, noting positive feedback about the more empathetic tone and improved signposting to support services.
However, the review identified ongoing challenges in the timeliness of fitness to practise cases, particularly in cases older than 156 weeks. With only nine cases older than 101 weeks, the GDC continues to reduce the number of older cases, which is more effective in the earlier stages of an investigation where greater influence can be exerted to improve timeliness. The GDC has recently revised its fitness to practise processes to improve timeliness when investigating single patient clinical practice concerns. The move follows the successful pilot of revised processes for handling fitness to practise concerns raised about dental professionals with no allegations of impaired fitness to practise in the previous 12 months. The emerging picture is one of overall improvement.
The regulator has plans in place to further enhance communication and support for those involved in fitness to practise cases as well as reviewing its decision-making guidance.
The GDC recognised the PSA’s concerns that it needs to provide clearer visibility of the work underway to deliver the current EDI strategy and has published an update on the strategy that shows progress and areas where it needs to do more.
The GDC’s EDI vision and approach will be incorporated into its corporate strategy from 2026, to ensure that EDI is embedded within its broader strategic objectives.
You can find the PSA monitoring report online.