Our corporate strategy and costed corporate plans

Our corporate strategy sets out our priorities for the next three years.

Our role in public protection remains unchanged, while our plan recognises that we need to modernise, and improve our performance in some areas.

We will continue to press for the opportunities that legislative reform may bring, but it cannot be guaranteed and will not resolve all existing issues. Therefore we will drive improvements within our current constraints while supporting and empowering the dental team to deliver safe and effective dental care to high standards of professionalism.

Our corporate strategy at a glance

Strategic aim one: Dental professionals reach and maintain high standards of safe and effective dental care

We protect the public by ensuring that dental professionals are well-trained, and deliver care to high standards, supported by a regulatory approach which enables prevention of harm, and lifelong learning.

Dental professionals and other stakeholders will:

Have an opportunity to help shape the promoting professionalism framework that will support and empower them to use their professional knowledge, skills and behaviours appropriate to the patient and circumstances.
Benefit from specialist training that is based on updated curricula.
Experience an improved and effective process for being added to a specialist list.
Be in control of their own professional development through effective lifelong learning.
Be educated and trained to deliver safe and effective dental care to a high standard under modernised standards and learning outcomes, set out in the safe practitioner framework.
Be able to access a modernised international registration process that continues to effectively assess the knowledge and skills required for safe practice.

Strategic aim two: Concerns are addressed effectively and proportionately to protect the public and support professional learning

We protect the public because we are part of an effective and accessible system for resolving complaints with only the most serious being dealt with as fitness to practise concerns.

Dental professionals, the public and other stakeholders will:

Find accurate and useful guidance on how to provide feedback and make a complaint about their dental care, before raising a concern with us.
Raise a concern with us because an investigation is a needed to ensure the public is protected, and wherever possible, has been previously considered through feedback and complaints processes operating across the sector.
Experience fair and proportionate fitness to practise investigations and decisions.
Have an opportunity to provide evidence and views on our reassessment of the restrictions in our legal framework, as we work to reduce the impact on those involved in fitness to practise investigations and hearings.

Strategic aim three: Risks affecting the public’s safety and wellbeing are dealt with by the right organisations

We protect the public because we are using our insight to highlight risks to their safety and wellbeing and encouraging the right parts of the sector to respond.

Our stakeholders and dental professionals will:

Be met with openness as we work collaboratively across the sector to address risks to public safety and wellbeing, building respect and trust in our public protection role.
Benefit from the insights and evidence we share on public risk.
Be equipped to respond to current and emerging risks to the public, assured by our standards and the regulatory functions we perform.

Strategic aim four: Dental professional regulation is efficient and effective, and adapts to the changing external environment

We protect the public because we maintain or improve our performance and are ready to adapt to changes to our legal framework and risks to the public.

Dental professionals and other stakeholders will:

Have a professional regulator that working to improve and operating as efficiently and effectively as possible, within current legislative and resource constraints.
Over the longer term, be regulated by a modernised and flexible framework, as we work with other regulators to prepare and maximise the potential of reform.
Work in a more diverse and inclusive sector, as we continuously work to eliminate discrimination in our functions and processes, particularly in our fitness to practise investigations.
Benefit from regulatory functions and processes that are designed and informed by data, research and evaluation.
Be supported by GDC staff and associates who have the right knowledge and skills, and who are part of a culture focused on improving performance and adopting to changing and uncertain circumstances.

How we will work to deliver our aims and objectives

Our corporate strategy includes a number of underpinning or supporting strategies that set out our approach to the delivery of our corporate aims and objectives, these are:

Organisational efficiency: ensuring we have the staff, systems and processes we need.
Preventative regulation: moving more of our effort towards the prevention of harm.
Communications and engagement: promoting understanding of our role and priorities, and involving others affected by our work in our strategic development.
Evidence, data and research: using the data we hold effectively, and drawing on evidence to drive development and improvements in our performance.
Equality, diversity and inclusion: fostering equality, diversity and inclusion at the GDC, across the sector, and with the public.

Our organisational values guide how we operate, these are:

Fairness: we treat everyone we deal with fairly.
Transparency: we are open about how we work and how we reach decisions.
Responsiveness: we listen, and we adapt to changing circumstances.
Respect: we treat everyone with respect.

Review our full Corporate Strategy 2023-2025.

Details of our activities and expenditure plans

Each year we update our rolling three-year Costed Corporate Plan setting out details of our planned activities and expenditure plans.

Our Costed Corporate Plan provides details of the resources allocated to the delivery of our strategic aims and associated outcomes. It also provides details of our reserves. Our reserves policy is reviewed and approved by our Council each year.

Find out more about how we monitor, manage and report our reserves.