GDC attempting to extend remit at expense of registrants
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- Published: Wednesday, 21 October 2015 07:35
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The British Dental Association (BDA) has expressed grave concerns that the General Dental Council (GDC) is attempting to extend its remit well beyond the duties given to it by Parliament, in its response to the regulator’s consultation on its corporate strategy for 2016-19, which has now closed. Mick Armstrong, Chair of the BDA, said: “It looks like the dental regulator is attempting to extend its remit at the expense of registrants.”
The GDC has been consulting with stakeholders on its ideas for the strategy since the summer, and has recently announced plans to keep the annual retention fee (ARF) at £890, the highest rate paid by any UK health professional. The GDC has proposed to have a role in ‘improving the quality of dental care’, to extend the role of the Dental Complaints Service (DCS), to consider the development of ‘quality metrics’ in dentistry, and to ‘enable patients to find out more about their dental professionals from the register’.
In its response the BDA has called on the GDC to focus exclusively on working within the powers required by statute, improving its performance in relation to the Professional Standards Authority’s Standards of Good Regulation and the principles of right-touch regulation; to keep its costs down and only charge a fee necessary to carry out its statutory functions; and to listen to the feedback it currently receives so that, over time, it can regain the trust of and work in partnership with the profession and other stakeholders.
Mick Armstrong, Chair of the BDA, said: “It looks like the dental regulator is attempting to extend its remit at the expense of registrants. Patients and practitioners deserve a regulator that’s both efficient and effective, which understands and focuses on its day job, as set out in law. The GDC’s inexorable mission creep continues to take us further from both those objectives.”
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