The General Dental Council (GDC) has published its 2025 Costed Corporate Plan (CCP), detailing its workplan for the next three years.
Released today (23 April), the CCP outlines what the regulator plans to do over the next three years and forecasts its income and expenditure for 2025.
The CCP sets out 29 projects for 2025-2027, 24 of which are on the 2025 workplan – 19 of these are ‘flow through’ projects from previous years, while five are new projects for this year.
The projects for 2025-2027 include:
- 1.1 Revise the standards for education
- 1.2 Revised international registration processes
- 1.9 Addressing sexual misconduct in the context of professionalism
- 2.1 Fitness to practise decision making guidance
- 4.5 Improving communications and support in fitness to practise
- 4.11 Case management and operational improvements in dental hearings.
The GDC’s total forecast expenditure for the next three years is £141.4 million, a 0.9% increase of the agreed budget of £140.2 million. According to the regulator, this increase is due to changes in national insurance’s threshold and rates, which were announced after the CCP was agreed in October 2024.
2024 in review
The CCP also reviews the 2024 plan and highlights progress made, such as changes to overseas registration exam (ORE) access.
Out of 32 projects on the GDC’s workplan for 2024, six were completed. Nineteen projects remain in progress and on track for delivery in 2025 or 2026, while six of them were removed from the plan.
The CCP also highlights that the regulator processed a record number of applications in 2024 with 12,978 – an increase from 11,476 in 2023. This included 2,167 new dentists and 9,728 new DCPs being registered.
According to the 2025 CCP, the GDC is looking to improve its registration processes by modernising it and making it faster. It has identified potential improvements and operation changes, such as moving to a digital, online application process, and it hopes to progress this work in 2025.
GDC will look to ‘reduce fear’
Tom Whiting is GDC chief executive and registrar. He said: ‘In our plans for 2025, you will see updated guidance on the standards for education and scope of practice, which are both possible as a result of extensive and invaluable stakeholder engagement.
‘We will continue to improve fitness to practise by improving our signposting to help, improving our guidance on decision-making to ensure fairness and consistency, and by looking to address and reduce fear of us. We also want to improve our digital capability and modernise our processes, to improve the experience for dental professionals accessing online services, such as registration and renewal. We have work underway this year to do this to build the experience of us in line with the needs of our users.
‘During 2025 we will continue to invest in our staff and our culture – as we build a values-led organisation. Like everyone, we need to attract and retain the right staff and support them in our work as effectively as we can. We know that new priorities, not on our initial plan, will require significant work, and we must be mindful of these.
‘However, I remain confident in our CCP and how it will enable us to play our part in working with the whole dental sector to deliver the government’s plans for the recovery of NHS dentistry, which includes more legislative change regarding how we register overseas dental professionals.’
Later this year, the GDC will open a public consultation on its proposed strategic plan for 2026-2028.
You can read the full CCP here.
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