A view from the Chair: Council’s decisions in October, and my first month as Chair

Council’s discussions and decisions

It was a real privilege to chair my first Council meeting last week. With a full agenda, three new Council members and the entire Council having spent a lot of time reviewing papers and preparing their thoughts, it made for a productive day. We enjoyed having stakeholders and members of the public join us and we can assure you of a warm welcome, should you ever wish to attend in person or online. You can request to observe a Council meeting here.

One of Council’s decisions was to agree the GDC’s strategy for the next three years, alongside the business plan, which includes a commitment to 7% efficiency savings over the next five years.

We were acutely aware of the impact of Council’s decision on affordability in setting the Annual Retention Fee (ARF). The ARF for 2026 will be £698 for dentists and £108 for dental care professionals (DCPs).

We reduced the ARF in 2024 and then held it at the same level in 2025 by, in effect, returning excess financial reserves to registrants. We now need to bring income and costs back into balance and plan, other than in exceptional circumstances, to hold the ARF in line with CPI, at most, until 2028.

Council also reviewed the reserves policy. The range for free reserves in 2026 – 2028 is staying the same, currently 2.5 to 4.5 months of our operating expenditure, but we updated the free reserves target to 4 months, to reflect increased risk and external volatility. You can read more about our Reserves Policy here, including the relationship between reserves and the ARF.

In delivering our strategy for 2026 – 2028, we commit to reporting regularly against meaningful outcome measures, from the perspective of registrants, patients and the public.

Reflecting on my first weeks as Chair

I have had really good conversations with professional associations, the Dental Schools Council, the Chief Dental Officers in England and Wales, with Bupa Dental Care and the ADG. There are few things as powerful as hearing how others describe your organisation and my initial conversations are helping me to see where we are now and assuring me that our future priorities to modernise, reform and address fear represent the right direction. Many more meetings are planned over the coming weeks and of course the Dental Leadership Network is taking place on 18 November which I am very much looking forward to attending. Please do come and say hello, should you be attending too.