Regulatory reform: more progress needed, and soon
I very much welcome the consultation exercise the Government has run on legislative reform for the healthcare professional regulators. We have in turn consulted extensively with a wide range of organisations and individuals across dentistry to share our thinking and to hear their views. All of that – and Council’s own thinking – has been distilled into our formal response to the consultation.
We have sought, for some years, a programme of reform which would unlock the prescriptive and restrictive legislation under which the GDC currently operates. This limits our ability to respond to changes in dental practice, to operate an effective and efficient regulatory system and, most importantly, to ensure public protection. That in turn means that our regulatory system is less efficient than it should be, which ultimately means registrants are paying more than they need to for outdated regulation.
Our response to the consultation welcomes many of the proposals, particularly the greater flexibility which will mean we will be much more prepared to respond to the changes that will inevitably arise as we move out of the pandemic and dentistry recovers and modernises.
However, as Chair of Council, my biggest concern is the further delay to the reforms as a result of the Government’s decision to review the number of healthcare professional regulators. The resulting delay is a great disappointment.
The Government has linked the need for this review to results of the Busting Bureaucracy exercise, noting that a number of stakeholders reported that having nine separate healthcare regulators is confusing.
We do not hear confusion from our stakeholders with regard to the number of professional regulators. We already have a single regulator with a single consistent approach for dentistry, covering all the regulated dental professions. What we do hear from stakeholders is the need for more progress in reform, faster.
The review of regulators in turn is frankly too slow and will not deliver better regulation and better protection of the public as fast as we, and they, deserve. We need rapid pace and a clear timetable for this.
While we wait, more than 115,000 members of the dental team remain frustrated by our inability to respond to changes in dental practice and make further changes to how we operate. And the public is deprived of a healthcare regulator able to operate an effective and efficient regulatory system.
We very strongly urge the Government to reconsider its approach and give regulatory reform the priority it needs.
What to read next…


Stefan Czerniawski
02 February 2023


Lord Toby Harris
02 February 2023


Caroline Logan
30 January 2023


Gurvinder Soomal
09 January 2023


Lord Toby Harris
05 January 2023

Improving fitness to practise processes in the absence of regulatory reform

John Cullinane
30 November 2022


Stefan Czerniawski
09 November 2022


Lord Toby Harris
02 November 2022


Lord Toby Harris
07 September 2022


Lord Toby Harris
11 August 2022


Lord Toby Harris
01 July 2022


Lord Toby Harris
01 June 2022


Elizabeth Gonzalez Malaga
12 May 2022


Lord Toby Harris
04 May 2022


Lord Toby Harris
06 April 2022


Jyoti Sumel and Monica Matanda
23 March 2022

A view from the GDC's Chair: Good discussions and progress on international registration

Lord Toby Harris
02 March 2022


John Cullinane
24 February 2022


Jyoti Sumel and Monica Matanda
23 February 2022


Stefan Czerniawski
11 February 2022