General Dental Council criticised in PSA review

The General Dental Council (GDC) has been criticised for failing to meet national standards for equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) and fitness to practise (FtP) timeliness.

The Professional Standards Authority’s (PSA) annual review for 2024/25 found that the council met 16 out of the 18 Standards of Good Regulation.

The regulator fell short on Standard 3 (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion), where is had to assure it was delivering the four high-level outcomes supported by the PSA’s evidence matrix. 

The report reveals the PSA ‘did not have sufficient assurance that the GDC was meeting two of the four outcomes. Therefore, it did not meet Standard 3 again this year’.

The PSA added: “We have commended the GDC on implementing priority booking for refugees on its Overseas Registration Exam (ORE) and the changes made to the identification and support for whistleblowers.

“We also noted that the GDC has made progress in its commitment to EDI and improved its public reporting of actions it is taking to deliver its EDI strategy.

“However, we still have concerns relating to 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 received EDI training.” 

The review assessed the GDC’s performance in regulating 129,578 dental professionals across the UK from 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025.

Tom Whiting, GDC chief executive and registrar, 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.”

He added: “Our key achievements include clearing the backlog of overseas Dental Care Professional (DCP) applications that had impacted performance in recent years, resulting in sustained improvements in processing times for international graduates.

“We successfully manage risks from illegal practice in a proportionate manner and have made improvements to our continuing professional development requirements, simplifying documentation to make it easier for registrants to comply.

“We have also taken steps to address capacity challenges with the Overseas Registration Examination (ORE), completing a three-year procurement process for a new provider that will deliver increased capacity for both parts of the exam from mid-2026.

“And, in education and training, we published revised Standards for Education (effective from 2026/27) following consultation, adding new requirements on monitoring behaviours, technological advances, differential attainment, and staff and student wellbeing.

“We also completed the transition of education providers to the Safe Practitioner Framework and published new guidance for education providers seeking to establish new dental schools.”

Commenting on the concerns over its fitness to practice timeliness, he said the number of cases older than three years had increased, adding: “Many older cases are awaiting third-party decisions including court dates in criminal prosecutions, outcomes of criminal proceedings, or conclusions of police investigations.

“The GDC plans to increase hearing capacity from five to seven hearings per day from January 2026.”