The General Dental Council (GDC) is combining its fitness to practise and registration directorates into a regulation directorate, led by a new, recently recruited executive director who joins in September 2023.
The regulation directorate will enhance resilience and efficiency and improve recruitment, flexibility and career development for staff.
This role is a significant and influential senior leadership position and will be responsible for a large part of the GDC’s operation, specifically the core regulatory functions of Registration, Fitness to Practise and Hearings, leading a multi-disciplinary team of over 110 people.
Theresa Thorp will be joining the GDC as executive director, regulation on September 14, 2023, based in Birmingham. Theresa joins the GDC from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors where she has held several positions, most recently as director of regulation enforcement and governance. She is a qualified advocate with rights of appearance in the South African High Courts and a solicitor-advocate (criminal) in England and Wales.
The current executive director of fitness to practise, John Cullinane, will take his extensive knowledge and experience to lead the GDC’s Hearings Service, including the Dental Professionals Hearing Service, which launched last year.
Ian Brack, GDC CEO and registrar, said, “Our overarching objective is protection of the public. To do this, one of our most important tasks is to ensure integrity of the register of dental professionals, including who should and should no longer be on that register. Bringing together registration and fitness to practise into a single function brings the unified approach needed to ensure that we deliver our regulatory purpose efficiently and effectively.”