Tom Whiting, Chief Executive, General Dental Council (GDC) speaking at the LDC Conference 2026

The GDC’s Chief Executive, Tom Whiting, spoke at the LDC Conference today (5 June 2026) - not checked against delivery  

Hello, I’m Tom Whiting and I’m the Chief Executive of the GDC – it is a special week because it now marks for me two years in the role.   

For those who don’t know me, a little bit about my background. Prior to this role, I was with the Independent Office for Police Conduct for five years, with the final 17 months as Acting Director General. Prior to the IOPC, I spent fourteen years in local government in London, latterly as Acting Chief Executive.  

I would like to thank conference chair, Sarah Canavan for the invitation to be a part of your conference this year. I enjoyed meeting many of you at last night’s dinner.  

In past years, the GDC has been represented at your annual conference by previous Chief Executives and Chairs of the Council. And I am pleased to be here today. I was just five months into my role as Chief Executive of the GDC when I spoke at an LDC-hosted event in London.   

I said then that I want to be someone who listens to what professionals tell us. That I recognised the need to look at ourselves from the point of view of the sector we regulate. Working together in partnership. Recognising the importance of constructive and positive relationships with all our stakeholders including the LDCs.  

This matters. These relationships, these conversations have helped shape the GDC’s strategy for the next three years. We wouldn’t have developed our new strategy in the way we have if we weren’t listening more.  

It is important for me too to connect with you. Collaboration is key for the dental sector, to jointly address the issues and challenges we face and at the GDC we take every opportunity to play our part.   

Last month, Len D’Cruz and Stephen Henderson took part in a panel session entitled ‘Regulation, complaints and litigation’ at the Dentistry Show in Birmingham. They were joined by the GDC’s Director of Regulation, Theresa Thorp, who spoke about fitness to practise, the work we have been doing and our future plans to improve.   

And Eddie Crouch has joined the working group of the Dental Leadership Network.  We are looking forward to the injection of insights, knowledge and ideas from Eddie – that we know he will bring.  

The GDC convenes the Dental Leadership Network three times a year and I know a number of LDCs are invited to attend. The working group of representatives from across dentistry come together to agree the theme, agenda and speakers.   

This month, on 30 June, the theme is ‘Embedding and supporting internationally qualified dental professionals into UK practise’.   

Now that capacity of the Overseas Registration Examination is increasing further – and with the LDS also increasing its capacity – we want to bring together the sector to understand the issues and tackle shared challenges to make this work for patients and the public.  

Trusted and effective – a strategy for dental regulation 

The title of my presentation today is  ‘An update from the GDC’. So what do I want to share with you?  

Well, first and foremost, the GDC has a new strategy for the next three years and beyond to 2030.  

I am proud of our new strategy. It’s what guides and shapes us. It was shaped by what we hear from dental professionals – in meetings and events such as this one today. I hope you agree it is a strategy set by an organisation that is listening.  

Our strategy contains some words that I think really stand out and have deep meaning. These words include trusted, supportive, learning culture, addressing the climate of fear, modern dentistry and user focussed.    

We wouldn’t have developed this strategy if we weren’t listening more. We ran a public consultation to help us shape our strategy. I’m pleased that over 450 of you took the time to respond.  

What’s new about the strategy?   

We are clear that we want to be trusted, and we know that to do this, we must be effective.   

Our vision includes supporting dental professionals to provide safe and effective care for their patients. The word ‘support’ has been carefully chosen to show our intention – we don’t want to be a barrier to dental professionals delivering safe and effective care for their patients.   

We want to regulate in a way that promotes learning over fear – supporting the dental team to demonstrate professionalism, rather than our fitness to practise work promoting the wrong behaviour.   

We are determined to address the climate of fear – because we know that it can impact a dental professional’s confidence, reduce the types of dental procedures they are willing to carry out and can have a negative impact on their mental health and wellbeing.  

I know that we cannot do this alone. I also know that the GDC, and regulation, are not the only concerns that dental professionals have. We will do our bit – and we will be asking others to step up and do theirs.

We want to regulate modern dentistry, to be more agile to understand and respond to changes in how dentistry is delivered and to what the public expects, so that dental professionals can practise safely using modern and innovative digital technology.   

We want to work collaboratively to speak up on, influence, and address issues that affect patients and the public.  

Dentistry is fragmented – there’s not really a single coherent voice and this sometimes means that people look to us for answers.   

What we can do is support and enable collaboration and discussions. We need to work collaboratively with our partners in dentistry, healthcare and regulation, with the UK and devolved governments and with the dental professions and this includes all of you here today.  

We have a shared interest in making dentistry work across the UK, and we all have a role to play.   

Of course we will not always agree, but I think we will agree on far more than we disagree on. We have different roles to play. But we won’t tackle deep-seated problems if we don’t collaborate. 

Fitness to Practise Statistical report 

Our Fitness to Practise Statistical report for 2025, published this week, is different to our previous reports. As part of our ongoing commitment to increasing transparency, we have expanded our analysis for every stage of the fitness to practise process.   

We have included data showing the types of cases we are investigating, the time it is taking us to investigate concerns and what decisions we are making. This new analysis also provides further insights into the specific concerns we investigate.  

In 2025, we saw a 26% increase in the number of concerns reported to us - 1,766 compared to 1,401 in 2024. This is something that other healthcare regulators are also experiencing, and we are looking into what is driving this increase.

Despite this increase, the same number of dental professionals were erased from the register as in 2024 - 18 people (9 dentists), which is 0.01% of all those on the register at the beginning of 2025.   

The analysis shows we improved our performance in 2025 in three of the four stages. We are also closing a higher proportion of cases at Initial Assessment, than at any time since 2021.  

Over the years, a climate of fear has grown within dentistry. This has been driven in part by mistrust, and fear of regulation and probably complaints and possible litigation.    

We are determined to address the climate of fear – because we know that it can impact a dental professional’s confidence – it could reduce the types of dental procedures they are willing to undertake, increase their administration time, and have a negative impact on their mental health and wellbeing.  

If it does that – we aren’t protecting the public.    

How can we best achieve this? Well, we want to regulate in a way which promotes learning over fear, supports people to continuously demonstrate professionalism, and doesn’t create the wrong behaviours through the threat of investigation.   

The GDC’s new strategy includes a specific objective to tackle this. 

We are committed to improving how we do things, but also how quickly we can resolve cases without compromising patient safety, so we have made some key changes.    

• We have introduced a streamlined approach for single patient clinical concerns, expanding it to include less serious conduct concerns. This avoids lengthy investigations which we know can have a negative impact on the health and wellbeing of participants. This has almost halved the time it takes us to complete the assessment stage - from 30 to 16 weeks.  

• In March we launched a public consultation on proposed changes to our guidance for case examiners. The proposed updates are designed to bring the guidance up to date, improve clarity and to support proportionate decision-making. The review also aims to improve transparency about how case examiner decisions are made. The closing date of the consultation is 18 June. Full information and details of how you can have your say are on our website.  

And so we are bringing together a programme of end-to-end improvements to investigations, challenging ourselves on timeliness, risk appetite and process improvements.  

We will look to unlock opportunities within current legislation.  

We will focus on the experience of those involved.  

This will include using technology to improve timeliness and provide a better experience.  

We will also learn from the things that work well at other health regulators.   

Key will be involving the sector - working closely with dental professionals and our partners to better understand where the current process has the most negative impact on the mental health and wellbeing of those involved and working collaboratively to address this.   

Delivery progress against our objectives 

Returning to our new three-year strategy, we are five months in and I wanted to give an update on delivery progress against our objectives.  

The launch of our new online portal – MyGDC - marks a significant step forward in our commitment to modernising our services and improving the experience for the thousands of dental professionals who join or manage their registration each year.   

We recently published the annual Registration Statistical report for 2025, showing a 3.4% increase in the number of dentists to just shy of 48,000.   

Interestingly, internationally qualified dentists now outnumber UK-qualified dentists joining the register, 53% compared to 47%. This trend is likely to accelerate.   

We want to get as many dental professionals practising in the UK as possible, without compromising patient safety.  We recognise the dental workforce crisis in the NHS and the role we play in registering dental professionals.   

The GDC has recently put in place a new delivery contract which will significantly increase capacity across both parts of the Overseas Registration Examination (ORE). Overall, the expansion is projected to deliver a more than fivefold increase in the number of overseas-qualified dentists able to complete the ORE and join the register by 2028.  

This, coupled with the proposed increase in capacity for the LDS examination and the growing number of EEA qualified dentists, could mean that by 2028 around three-quarters of new dentists coming onto the register will have qualified outside of the UK.  

Those who qualify overseas make an important and valuable contribution to the dental workforce in the UK. The whole sector, including all of us here today, has a role to play in how we can successfully embed and support internationally qualified dental professionals into UK practice.