General Dental Council (GDC) - Statutory Panellists Assurance Committee Chair

The GDC’s primary purpose is to ensure public safety and maintain public confidence in dental services. To achieve this, it registers qualified professionals, sets and enforces standards of dental practise, investigates fitness to practise complaints, and ensures the quality of dental education.

Dentistry has been particularly impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic, with all but urgent dental care stopped for several months and, although dental practices have started to reopen, it will be many months, possibly years, before services return to ‘normal’. The environment the GDC operates within is also complex. The different health systems across the UK are becoming increasingly divergent, and the decision to exit the EU will have implications for the dental workforce, and for regulation of the dental team.

The SPC (Statutory Panellists Assurance Committee) is an independent, non-executive statutory Committee of the GDC whose role is to oversee the recruitment of members of the Fitness to Practise Committees. It is an integral part of ensuring the committees’ independence from the GDC and helps to ensure that committees’ decisions have the confidence of the public and the profession. These appointments are being made at a time of change, with the GDC seeking to reinforce the independence of statutory decision-making by giving the adjudication function a separate identity, and with a commitment to seeking legislative change.

The GDC is looking to appoint a chair and two Committee members to the SPC:

• The chair will have experience having served in a judicial office, ideally having served in a judicial leadership position involving the leadership of other judges or non-judicial panel members.
• One Committee member will be a registrant member who is currently registered with the GDC.
• The other will be a lay member, and we are seeking candidates who can demonstrate experience of senior level human resource processes and procedures including recruitment, performance and disciplinary processes, preferably in a public sector organisation.

Saxton Bampfylde Ltd is acting as an employment agency advisor to the General Dental Council on these appointments. For further information about the role, including more information on criteria for candidates and details about how to apply, please visit www.saxbam.com/appointments using reference AZNG for the chair role, and AZNH for the Committee member roles. Alternatively, telephone +44 (0)20 7227 0880 (during office hours). Applications should be received by noon on Monday 24 August 2020.

The GDC is committed to promoting equality of opportunity and values diversity of culture.  We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from all suitably qualified individuals.  We will seek to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly, with respect and without bias.