Mick Armstrong slams GDC over fee rise
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- Published: Tuesday, 01 July 2014 19:37
- Written by News Editor
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Mick Armstrong, who chairs the BDA’s Principal Executive Committee (PEC) has expressed his alarm over the General Dental Council’s (GDC) plans to raise the annual retention fee from £576 to £945. He said: “The suggestion that the profession pay more to fund a Council that has been shown unable to do its job properly is frankly astonishing.”
Mick continued: “The rise would be unpalatable at the best of times but it now appears that the profession is being asked to foot the bill for failure. It’s not just the huge rise in fees that has left the profession aghast but, when dentists are expected to tolerate poor performance by the very body that is charged with the duty to assess their fitness to practise, we are justifiably outraged. The figure is, by a country mile the highest fee charged by any comparable healthcare regulator. Some (of these) have managed to maintain or even reduce their annual retention fees and also fared better in their PSA (Professional Standards Authority) reports. Something just doesn’t add up.”
Mick Armstrong has already met GDC leaders to express his alarm at their plans for a 64% hike in the fee from next year. He told them that such a rise was ‘wholly unacceptable’ and is at odds with the actions of all the other regulators.
The BDA will be raising these concerns with health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, especially as the exorbitant rise is at odds with the principle contained in the 2011 white paper, Enabling Excellence. This requires regulators to minimise the financial burden on individual registrants.
The PSA (which regulates the regulators) report concluded that the GDC had failed to meet seven out of ten standards governing registrants’ fitness to practise. These failings have led both patients and dentists being left in limbo and have added to the stress experienced by all parties involved. Pumping more money from registrants into a flawed system is not the solution, says the BDA.
The Association believes that the GDC must investigate the underlying reason for the ‘significant’ increase in complaints about dental registrants. It needs to work with the profession to determine their causes rather than raising dentists’ annual retention fee by nearly two thirds.
The BDA will be consulting its members for their views on the GDC’s performance as well as the proposed increase in retention fees.
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