The General Dental Council (GDC) has released its annual whistleblowing report, showing the number of blue-on-blue referrals it received in 2024-25.
The report reveals that the regulator received 79 disclosures of information from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025. This was the same as the number reported in the previous year’s report.
Of these, 51 concerns were raised by other dental professionals, 22 by non-registrants employed in dentistry and six were anonymous.
Conduct concerns were the most common disclosure, featuring in 54 of the 79 disclosures. This refers to issues relating to dental professionals’ behaviour, whether in or outside of the workplace.
All of the disclosures were reported directly to the fitness to practise team and resulted in regulatory action taking place – namely, the opening of a fitness to practice case.
In 32 cases, the GDC did not consider itself to have enough information to proceed and closed the investigation at the assessment stage. One was passed to a different regulator, and 29 are still being considered at the assessment stage.
The GDC said: ‘We continue to receive a high proportion of disclosure for the size of the register. However, it is worth highlighting that the majority of dentistry is provided in a primary care setting and outside the more robust clinical governance framework that characterise some other forms of healthcare.
‘This may mean that alternative disclosure routes are not available in many dental settings, resulting in a larger proportion therefore being reported to the regulator.’
What has changed since last year?
Though the number of disclosures in dentistry stayed consistent from the previous year, having reduced from 82 to 79, there are a number of key differences.
For example, regulatory action was taken on 64 of the 2023-24 concerns (81%), compared to 100% for 2024-25.
The number of anonymous disclosures has also reduced from 20 in 2023-24 to six this year. The GDC said it had ‘strengthened its approach to identifying and supporting whistleblowers through quarterly reviews and additional verification processes’.
Increased transparency on whistleblowing
The Whistleblowing Disclosures Report 2025 was published jointly by a number of healthcare regulators including those for dentistry, medicine, optometry, and nursing and midwifery.
In 2017, a new law came into force requiring the regulatory bodies to publish an annual report on whistleblowing reports made to them.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: ‘The aim of this duty is to increase transparency in the way that whistleblowing disclosures are dealt with and to raise confidence among whistleblowers that their disclosures are taken seriously.
‘Producing reports highlighting the number of qualifying disclosures received and how they were taken forward will go some way to assure individuals who blow the whistle that action is taken in respect of their disclosures.’
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