Sir, Professor Batchelor's paper, Registration and retention of dentists on the General Dental Council register between 2006 and 2016 (BDJ 2018; 224: 105–109) highlights important issues to be considered by those tasked with the challenge of dental workforce planning. This challenge is confounded by, amongst other factors, lack of information on the number of General Dental Council (GDC) registrants contributing to oral healthcare provision in the UK, and the extent of registrant's engagement in clinical practice.

How many GDC registrants based in Europe, or further afield internationally, retain their GDC registration for purposes other than the practice of dentistry in the UK? And, what is the average commitment of GDC registrants working in the UK to the clinical care of patients? It is suggested that answers to these questions would greatly increase the value of future dental workforce planning exercises.

How could such data be collected? One solution could be findings from questions posed at the time of making the required annual statement of continuing professional development (CPD) completed to the GDC. For example: Do you anticipate providing (or contributing to) the clinical care to patients in the UK during the next 12 months? If so, how many hours a week on average do you anticipate being engaged in the care of patients? It is acknowledged that the findings from such simple questions would suffer certain limitations; however, the impact on workforce planning could be profound.

Answers to questions of the type proposed would help to protect the public and should, therefore, be seen to be an appropriate responsibility of the GDC. Assuming answers provided from individual registrants online could be collated electronically, there would be little additional burden on the Council.