The General Dental Council's chair, Dr Helen Phillips, has warned that a sharp rise in fitness-to-practise (FtP) concerns is putting "substantial pressure" on the regulator's costs, in a blog marking her first year in post and published ahead of a decision on registration fees later this month.
According to the GDC's own figures, the volume of FtP concerns reported rose to 1,766 in 2025, up from 1,401 in 2024 — a 26% increase. The regulator reports a further 20% year-on-year rise so far in 2026. Phillips wrote that Council is "looking very closely" at how to mitigate the financial impact, partly through operational efficiencies in FtP and more broadly, including from its new MyGDC registration and renewal tool.
The updated business plan — now extending to the end of 2029 — goes to Council for approval on 30 October, and the annual retention fee (ARF) will be set in light of those wider decisions.
What the fee mechanics actually mean for a practice
In direct cash terms, this is a small number. Phillips reiterated guidance issued last year that the ARF may be adjusted for 2027 and 2028, but that "other than in exceptional circumstances, any increase will not exceed the rate of the Consumer Price Index."
As Dentistry.co.uk reports, the most recent CPI figure was 3.1% for the year to August 2026, which would add roughly £22 to the current £698 dentist ARF — the fee having already risen from £621 for 2026. The dental care professional (DCP) fee rose from £96 to £108 for 2026. For a practice employing several dentists and DCPs, a CPI-level rise is an aggregate of tens of pounds a year: not a figure worth modelling as a line item.
That is the reassuring reading. It is worth being precise about its limits.
The CPI 'cap' has a door left open
The phrase to read carefully is "other than in exceptional circumstances." The CPI figure is a presumption, not a ceiling, and the GDC has deliberately retained the discretion to exceed it.
Whether those circumstances arise depends heavily on the GDC's reserves position — and here the blog leaves a gap. Phillips stressed that current reserves remain "within target range" and that there is "no short-term pressure" on finances. But as Dentistry.co.uk notes, its earlier reporting on a forecast published in September projected free reserves equivalent to just 1.5 months of operating expenditure by the end of 2028 — below the GDC's stated target range of 2.5 to 4.5 months. The chair's blog says the new business plan will account for expected reserves at the end of 2029, but does not explain whether that 2028 forecast has changed.
This is the number owners should actually keep an eye on. A reserves position forecast to fall below target is precisely the kind of situation in which an above-CPI increase becomes defensible under the "exceptional circumstances" wording. Our reading is that the combination of an unaddressed reserves forecast and a reassuring tone warrants watchfulness rather than complacency — though it is equally possible the efficiency savings the chair describes close the gap. No decision has been made, so there is nothing to build into a cash-flow forecast yet. But treating the CPI cap as a guaranteed ceiling would be a mistake.
The complaints figure tells you less than it looks
It is tempting to read a compounding rise in FtP concerns as evidence that something is going wrong clinically across UK dentistry. The data published here does not support that inference, in either direction.
These are raw counts of concerns reported. The blog gives no denominator (concerns as a proportion of the register), no breakdown by concern type or severity, and — importantly — no figures on how many cases are closed with no further action. A rising number of reported concerns is consistent with genuinely increased risk, but it is equally consistent with lower triage thresholds, a rise in vexatious or commercially-motivated complaints, better signposting that encourages people to report, or counting changes. From the published figures alone, these explanations cannot be told apart. The percentage increases are credible as a directional signal of workload — they come from the regulator's own case data — but they are not a validated measure of patient-safety trends, and should not be reported as one.
The practical relevance for practices is indirect but real. A sustained rise in referrals, whatever its cause, raises the statistical likelihood over time that a team member — an associate, hygienist or nurse — becomes the subject of an investigation. The costs of that are mostly unquantified here: locum cover, indemnity engagement, management time, and the disruption of a process that can run for months. That burden is not evenly distributed. Smaller independent and single-handed practices, without the HR and legal infrastructure of a corporate group, absorb proportionally more owner time per case. And the people carrying the heaviest personal cost are not owners at all — they are the associates and DCPs who face the investigation, with the career and mental-health exposure that entails.
BAPD at the Council table — access, not yet outcome
The British Association of Private Dentistry (BAPD) presented to September's public Council meeting, with president Simon Thackeray and board member and dental technician Jenna Ellis raising FtP investigation timescales and "strengthening scope of practice safeguards across the dental team." Thackeray described being "listened to" and said dental professionals were seeing that "the GDC is changing."
That access is welcome. It is worth being clear-eyed that presenting to Council is not the same as influencing guidance. Consultative sessions do not always translate into substantive change, and the scope-of-practice remarks come with no operational detail — no indication of which roles, which delegated duties, or what the specific concern is. This is a conversation, not a proposal. Nothing here changes skill-mix, delegation protocols or DCP remit, and any future GDC guidance on those points should be scrutinised on its own terms when it appears. File it under "watch this space," not "act now."
Operationally, nothing changes today. No new compliance task, workflow or training is mandated by this blog, and a CPI-level fee rise is immaterial to any practice's P&L.
The useful takeaways are quieter. First, do not treat the CPI figure as a firm ceiling when thinking about 2028 — the "exceptional circumstances" carve-out, read against the unaddressed reserves forecast, is a genuine conditional worth noting now while flagging it costs nothing. Second, the FtP trend is a reason to review your team's indemnity, mentoring and defence-body support — not as a reaction to a safety signal that this data does not establish, but because the rising probability of a team member facing a process is real regardless of its cause.
A word of caution on how any of this is communicated. There is no patient-facing angle here, and manufacturing one would be a compliance risk. Rising FtP numbers say nothing about the trustworthiness of any individual practice, and using "GDC-registered" or similar as a differentiator in advertising risks the ASA's misleading-by-omission principle — regulation is the legal minimum every lawful practice meets, not a selling point. Internally, a note to the team reaffirming existing indemnity and support structures can have genuine retention value with anxious associates and DCPs. But frame it honestly: a reassurance message built on regulatory reform the GDC has promised but not yet demonstrated — the blog cites efficiency gains without a single concrete timeliness metric — can ring hollow with precisely the audience most likely to scrutinise it.