The General Dental Council (GDC) is developing new guidance to provide a framework for fitness to practise decision-making, and is calling for your views. The GDC is strengthening its arrangements for dealing with problems of behaviour and poor health in dental professionals, and introducing much-needed new procedures to tackle problems of professional competence. To support this new fitness to practise system, the GDC is publishing a series of guidance documents. The guidance aims to promote consistency and clarity in decision-making, and should also help the public and professionals understand why and how decisions about dental professionals' fitness to practise have been made. The GDC is now soliciting input to four draft guidance documents on:

  • The Investigating Committee: case referral (the criteria for deciding which cases should be referred for full hearing before a practice committee; when to close cases at the Investigating Committee stage, and when to issue advice and warnings instead of ordering a full hearing).

  • Interim suspensions and interim conditional registration (the use of interim orders pending a full practice committee hearing).

  • The relationship between GDC investigation and fitness to practise procedures, and the new Dental Complaints Service (DCS) (for complaints about private dentistry).

  • Guidance to case work and investigations staff on handling fitness to practise matters.

Visit the GDC website (www.gdc-uk.org) for details of the consultation. The closing date for responses is Wednesday 19 April 2006. The GDC is also currently seeking views on the draft Rules for the new fitness to practise system itself – in other words the subsidiary legislation that provides the framework for the new system. The closing date for responses to this consultation is Friday 31 March 2006.

The GDC has already consulted on and produced two other sets of fitness to practise guidance - one for the Professional Conduct Committee, and another on the effect of criminal convictions and proven misconduct on registration. The new fitness to practise system, which the new guidance documents will support, is expected to launch in July 2006.