The GDC has published its latest Fitness to Practise report. Peter Ingle takes a look at what it says.
It would appear that the General Dental Council (GDC) now recognises a problem with how many of its registrants perceive their stewardship of the Fitness to Practise (FtP) process. Compared to the Moyes and Gilvarry era, this represents progress.
Theresa Thorp, executive director of regulation at the GDC, acknowledges that the process remains suboptimal in the introduction to the GDC’s Fitness to Practise Statistical Report 2025, published this month. She writes: ‘While our performance is improving, we know that we still need to do more to improve. We know that fitness to practise investigations can take too long and can feel overly complex, often leading to feelings of mistrust, unfairness and more widely, fear of the process and of the General Dental Council.’
The GDC describes the 68-page document as its ‘most detailed fitness to practise report to date’ and says there have been improvements in three out of four stages of the process. Those stages are: initial assessment, assessment, case examiners, and hearings.
Alongside comparisons with previous years, the report includes analysis by source of concern, type of registrant, time registered, region of qualification, and ethnicity.
The bad news is that 1,766 new concerns reached the first stage for initial assessment in 2025, which represents a 26% rise on 2024.
However, it is how the GDC handles those items in the FtP ‘in-tray’ that will influence registrants’ perception of the organisation.
In an illustrative breakdown of every 100 decisions made across the process in 2025, 81 progressed to assessment, 34 to case examiners and 15 to a hearing. The GDC notes that this does not track the outcomes of concerns received in 2025 alone and includes cases that began in previous years.
When it came to processing, the GDC completed 1,293 assessments in 2025 - one fewer than the previous year. Against a 26% increase in new concerns, the number of completed assessments raises a question about whether the backlog could increase. The assessment caseload at the end of the year rose from 564 to 761 - up 35% - which suggests pressure is already building at that stage.
Further along the process, the number of hearings increased by 50% to 110 in 2025. These led to the removal of 18 individuals from the register, the same number as in 2024.
One area where the GDC has improved performance is the closure of 19% of new concerns at the initial assessment stage. This is something the GDC has been working on and represents the highest percentage in the last four years.
The average time to complete the assessment stage increased from 76 working weeks in 2024 to 78 in 2025. However, the average time from assessment decision to final case examiner decision dropped from 50 working weeks to 36. The time from final case examiner decision to an initial Practice Committee hearing fell from 81 working weeks to 57, a five-year low.
The GDC has highlighted its recently adopted approach to single-patient clinical concerns. It reduced the time to complete the assessment stage for these cases from 30 to 16 weeks.
However, for cases that progressed further, the picture was less positive. On the GDC’s illustrative ‘per 100 cases’, outcomes resulting in sanctions rose from eight in 2024 to 10 in 2025 – a 25% increase in relative terms. The Practice Committee outcomes table also shows a rise in sanction outcomes, from 49 in 2024 to 72 in 2025.
Another potentially concerning trend is a substantial increase in the use of interim orders. There were 149 initial Interim Orders Committee (IOC) hearings in 2025, compared with 99 in 2024 – an increase of about 50%.
Overall, 70% resulted in an order being placed on a registrant’s registration, up from 62% the previous year. The most common case type was a combination of clinical and conduct issues, and 83% of those referrals resulted in an order placed on the registrant’s registration or ability to practise.
Such orders can impose conditions or suspension before a case has been fully determined. Where a registrant is unable to work until a substantive hearing takes place, often many months later, the impact can be severe, particularly if the registrant is later cleared or receives a lower sanction.
There were also changes in who raised concerns about registrants, which may reflect wider trends in healthcare. In 2025, the proportion of concerns coming from patients decreased from 51% in 2024 to 45%. In contrast, the proportion of new FtP concerns raised by whistleblowers increased from 3% to 5% of the total received.
As the demographics of the workforce change, concerns involving UK-qualified dentists fell below 60% for the first time, while those involving EEA and overseas-qualified dentists increased.
Since 2021, the proportion of concerns raised about DCPs has risen as a percentage of the total, from 19% to 23% in 2025.
Equality, diversity and inclusion receive significant attention in the report.
One notable finding is that Asian or Asian British dentists make up 31% of the register but accounted for 36% of new concerns received in 2025. Dentists who identified as White make up 46% of the register and accounted for 35% of new concerns.
Since only 6% of concerns come from within the GDC, these figures will predominantly reflect behaviour and attitudes outside the organisation. The report cautions that the data should not be used in isolation to draw conclusions about causation, saying that factors such as practice location, workplace dynamics, practice size and local demographics may be relevant.
Regardless of the cause, the GDC does influence how concerns are handled once received, and the report indicates substantial changes.
Since 2022, the proportion of assessment stage cases closed for dentists who identified as White dropped from 42% to 35%, while the proportion closed for dentists who identified as Asian or Asian British increased from 26% to 36%
The report contains more than 30 tables and a similar number of graphs. At just under 30,000 words, with an estimated reading time of around three hours and accessible via a link, it is unlikely to be read in full by many registrants.
Whether its form helps or hinders the GDC’s stated ambition to become a ‘trusted and effective’ regulator by 2028 may become clearer in the coming months.