The General Dental Council (GDC) has published its Annual Report and Accounts for 2023, highlighting a year focused on public protection. Many stresses in the dental sector continued, as the GDC's own research highlighted difficulties for patients in accessing dental care, particularly NHS dental services. Discussions about the dental workforce continued to be a priority for the sector and the GDC committed to collecting workforce pattern data to help to inform these discussions.

Supported by stakeholders, the GDC invited dentists to voluntarily provide working pattern data as part of the annual renewal process, with the responses providing a greater understanding of where dentists were working, the nature of their work, and how many hours they worked in NHS or private practice. Those valuable insights help support future workforce resource planning.

In their joint statement in the Annual Report and Accounts, the GDC's Chair, Lord Toby Harris, and Chief Executive, Tom Whiting, said: ‘As we look forward to the rest of 2024, we are confident in our Costed Corporate Plan and that it will help us play our part in working with the whole dental sector to support the continuing recovery of dentistry. This includes legislative change around how we register overseas dental professionals. We also remain committed to improving our regulatory activities where we can in the absence of legislative reform, while always ensuring that the public are protected.'