LDC Conference: a success in new format
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- Published: Monday, 13 June 2016 07:49
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The Annual Conference of Local Dental Committees (LDCs) took place over two days, June 9 and 10 in Manchester. It was hailed a success by many representatives, much down to the Chair, Dr Nick Stolls and the agenda committee. On the evening of June 9 the conference Annual Dinner was held, where the after-dinner speaker was Stephen Hancocks OBE.
In addition to the usual motions from LDCs, speakers included Dr Henrik Overgaard-Nielson, chair of the General Dental Practice Committee (GDPC), Professor Sara Hurley, Chief Dental Officer for England and Matthew Hill, Director of Strategy at the General Dental Council. A presentation by health minister, Rt Hon Alistair Burt MP, was cancelled as his office had indicated that he was unavailable.
A BDA press release issued in advance of the conference said that dentists attending ‘will call on the government to get to grips with its failure to stem the crisis in child tooth decay’. This did not happen although Henrik did say: “Why are we carrying out extractions, when we should be saving pain and money by aiming to keep healthy teeth in healthy mouths?” Much of his speech, however, was devoted to his committee’s discussions on the new prototype contracts.
Sara Hurley’s presentation covered the full remit of her responsibilities in the Office of the Chief Dental Officer, with her two deputies. She updated Conference on developments since her talk to LDC officials day last year. One of these was the innovation of in-practice prevention, announced by the minister at the BDA conference last month. Sara said she had spent the first few months of this year visiting all areas of the country and said she was looking to local bodies such as LDCs and Local Dental Networks to feed in suggestions about how to improve the service. England was too diverse for a ‘one size fits all’ approach. She had bad news to tell, there was no extra money, it was a struggle to retain what dentistry had. And the Treasury was insistent that, across the whole of the public sector, there would be no more ‘contracts for life’.
Another speaker who said his door was open was, surprisingly for some, the GDC director of strategy, Matthew Hill. He was upfront in admitting that the GDC was unprepared for the extra complaints received in 2013, but said some progress had been made to get rid of backlogs. The GDC has a new management team and is committed to changing, he said, and ‘we are listening.’ Good regulation, he said, is not about making rules and punishing dentists, there was a need to rethink the GDC’s approach. To this end a consultation document would be published in the autumn and he invited LDCs to come forward with comments. He admitted that the legislation under which they worked was ‘antiquated’ with an emphasis on sanctions, rather than training. Everyone had a part to play he said and the GDC’s door ‘was well and truly open.’
The agenda committee had changed the format of the debates on motions to encourage more debate, a move which was on the whole successful. Some motions such as those calling for the resignation of the chair of the GDC, for fairer regulations and contractual obligations, as well as demanding better funding, were passed with massive majorities. But on many others there was good debate and Conference rejected calls for the GDPC to withdraw from talks on the prototypes and there was a significant majority against industrial action.
Another innovation at this year’s Conference was the use of iPads (on loan to every attendee), not only used for voting on motions, but also allowing representatives to follow the proceedings and the presentations. Everyone attending could log in using a unique code. Although there were some technical problems at first, which were resolved, it took the Conference into the 21st century.
Joe Hendron, from Wakefield, was elected to chair the Conference in June 2018.
The event closed with the induction of the new chair for 2016/17, Alisdair McKendrick. Next year’s conference will take place in Birmingham.
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