The General Dental Council (GDC) is failing in its fitness to practise function according to the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). 

The Professional Standards Authority’s annual performance review of the GDC has shown that it is failing in 2 of the PSA’s Standards of Good Regulation.  Both standards relate to the GDC’s fitness to practise processes.

The first Standard (Standard 6 for Fitness to Practise) relates to the timeliness of dealing with cases at the initial stages of the GDC’s fitness to practise process. The GDC also failed to meet this Standard last year.

The PSA commented “that whilst the GDC has made some improvements, its performance in this area as a whole has been mixed and its overall timeframe for concluding cases remains at the high end of the regulators that we oversee.”

The second (Standard 10 for Fitness to Practise) is in respect of protecting confidential information. The GDC has not met this Standard since 2012.

The PSA commented “there were three serious data breaches in the period under review, one of which involved the publication of sensitive mental health information which was included in a published fitness to practise determination, and which remained available online for a number of weeks.” 

While we are aware that it has taken a number of steps to address these issues recently, the PSA were concerned by the number and type of breaches that we saw in this performance period.