eGDCEnsure that our regulatory activity is fair, transparent, and accessible to all
As a provider of a public service, we are required to adhere to the Equality Act 2010 and the associated Public Sector Equality Duty. This means that we must continuously demonstrate our consideration to:
- Eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
- Advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.
- Foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.
One of the ways we consider these aims is by using the anonymised data we hold on our stakeholders’ protected characteristics of:
Meeting the objective
Below are some of the activities that we have committed to undertaking to achieve this objective.
- Continue our work to understand the diversity of dental professionals.
- Understand how Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) is discussed in dental education and training.
- Understand where our processes may impose inappropriate barriers and take action to remove them.
- Ensure our corporate complaints process enables us to capture EDI themes systematically.
- Analyse EDI themes arising from corporate complaints and take action to address these.
- Ensure our fitness to practise functions are confident in supporting vulnerable stakeholders, such as those with hidden disabilities.
- Analyse over-representation in Fitness to Practise cases and what this means.
Monitoring progress
We will monitor progress against the objective using the following standards or indicators:
- Continuing to maintain Professional Standards Authority (PSA) EDI Standard (Standard 3).
- Ongoing diversity reporting.
- Feedback on the experiences of different groups of dental professionals.
- Monitoring areas highlighted through corporate complaints.
Developments against this objective
We have been reviewing our equality data and working to update our equality monitoring form for dental professionals, which can be found on eGDC.
Supporting this work, we have produced FAQs on equality data and explained the importance of recording this data to the GDC, the public and the whole dental team in a recent blog post on the topic.