BDIA Dental Showcase gives GDC Chief Executive and Registrar, Tom Whiting

BDIA Dental Showcase gives GDC Chief Executive and Registrar, Tom Whiting, the floor

Tom kindly answered some of our questions ahead of his session in the Clinical Theatre on Friday 14 March.

 

A little information on Tom’s career to date

 

Tom Whiting joined the GDC in June 2024, from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), where he was Acting Director General for 17 months, having been Deputy Director General since 2019. 

 

Prior to the IOPC, Tom spent 14 years in local government at Harrow Council, most recently as their Interim Chief Executive, where he was responsible for public health, public protection services safeguarding children and adults and a range of regulatory services including environmental health, trading standards, planning and building control. For many years he was responsible for finance, people and legal, and governance services and, before that, Tom spent nine years in the energy and utilities practice at Accenture.

 

What skills/experiences do you feel you have accrued that will assist in your role with the GDC?

 

I have been able to see firsthand the profound impact our work and the work of those around us can have on people’s lives and, in particular, their wellbeing and safety.

 

My firm belief ­– based on previous experience of what has and has not worked ­– is that the goals of the most effective organisations are best delivered in partnership with others, while being respectful of our different roles.

 

I hope to bring these experiences to ensure that the GDC is an effective and trusted regulator, committed to working with others to identify the common areas that we can work on that help patients and professionals alike.

 

What are the key areas of focus for the GDC for the coming six months? How will the direction of travel change for the GDC compared to last year?

 

We will continue to make improvements to the fitness to practise (FtP) processes where we can, looking to minimise the stress and anxiety of what we know is a difficult process. We want to get faster without compromising public protection, and make sure the process continues to be fair to participants and proportionate to the issues raised.

 

We want to ensure that the small number of dental professionals involved in an investigation feel supported, by improving our operational efficiency and addressing wellbeing concerns. This requires continued and regular training for our caseworkers and managers from a specialist mental health charity, helping them to identify those who may be in distress and signposting them to support earlier and more effectively. Independent panellists and legal advisers at the hearings have also received training to help them support vulnerable individuals during hearings. In addition, we will review and modernise our suite of FtP guidance, providing decision-makers with an improved framework that supports fair and consistent decision-making.

 

Our second priority is the registration process. Joining the register is one of the most significant moments in a dental professional’s career, and we take our responsibility here very seriously. We want to remove friction from the registration process where we can and are developing ways to reduce the reliance on paper submissions for registration applications in 2025. For candidates who qualified outside the UK, the procurement exercise to find suppliers and increase capacity for the Overseas Registration Examination (ORE) is ongoing so I can’t say too much about it right now. However, I am pleased that we were able to introduce a policy to provide eligible candidates with refugee status priority access to book a place on the ORE and we expect to see this taken up in future exam sittings.

 

And a third priority is developing our Corporate Strategy for 2026 to 2028, which we expect to consult on in early summer. Not only does this set the direction and priorities for dental professional regulation, it provides the basis for setting the level of the Annual Retention Fee (ARF) over the strategy period.

 

This time, we’re also going to be looking further ahead to 2030. This will allow us to take account of the potential longer-term impacts of the changes we make within the three-year strategy period. Inevitably, we know that the future can’t be predicted with certainty, but this approach will help everyone to be confident that the choices we make for the new strategy are consistent with our objectives for effective regulation in the longer-term.

 

How will the GDC look to engage with the profession as part of its collaborative working?

 

A huge priority for me is to engage, listen and understand issues, as well as respond. Last year I really enjoyed understanding more about where and how dental professionals work, and I’ll be visiting more dental settings again this year.

 

I meet regularly with the professional associations and other stakeholders to understand the issues and share information about what the GDC is doing that is relevant to the whole dental team. We recognise the important role that professional associations have in conveying information to their members and look to provide updates and information that they can pass on, to help individuals understand the GDC’s role and priorities.

 

The GDC had a stand at six industry events last year and we convened the Dental Leadership Network three times. We’ll continue to attend events because it’s where dental professionals and stakeholders are and they provide a great opportunity to listen and chat. Some of our Council members are often on the GDC’s stand too and enjoy meeting dental professionals firsthand.

 

We also collaborate with other important partners in developing our policies and operational improvements. Some of this is through stakeholder meetings or workshops and some through public consultations when we encourage anyone with an interest to provide their feedback.

 

Is there anything else you would like to add?

 

I’m committed to building upon our relationships with dental professionals and stakeholders to build trust and understanding, and to develop partnerships where we can most productively work together. I want dental professionals to feel that I am someone they can work with. We will sometimes disagree, but it should not get in the way of progress.

 

More than just working together, I want us to build partnerships to help us to be a trusted and effective regulator, and where together we protect patients and maintain confidence in the dental profession.