Local dental committees call for GDC to address urgent concerns

Local dental committees (LDCs) representing a number of regions of the UK have written to the General Dental Council (GDC) to voice concerns over its organisational strategy.

In an open letter published by Dentistry.co.uk, LDCs of areas including Barnsley, Cumbria, the East Midlands, Leicestershire, north Yorkshire and Tees Wakefield have called for GDC chair William Moyes to urgently address a number of key problems raised by the industry.

The organisations suggested that the GDC's controversial plan to raise its annual retention fee (ARF) by 64 percent does not respect the pressures many practices are facing, and is indicative of a desire for dentists to bail out the regulator due to problems of its own creation.

As such, the LDCs have called on the regulatory body to meet with them and the British Dental Association to discuss other solutions, with a wholesale review of its overly costly fitness-to-practise processes to be carried out.

It was also proposed that ARF increases should be limited to the rise in NHS contract values annually, among other recommendations.

The letter stated: "A more local/regional approach would be preferable to an increasingly large autocratic regulator that appears to be genuinely unaccountable to those it regulates."