It's not Nolan you know

Last year saw the appointments process for new council members of the General Dental Council.  A formal, lengthy and expensive exercise carried out to appoint equal numbers of suitable lay and registrant members to Council.  The interviews were centred around the ability of the candidates to understand the concept of governance based on the Nolan principle - openness, accountability, honesty, objectivity, selflessness, integrity and leadership.  The final 24 members were an impressive array of varied skills and knowledge and registrants covered a wide aspect of dentistry.  All boded well and although not the form of self regulation we were used to in the past it seemed as though the interests of the patients would be protected through a well informed and cohesive Council.

The loss of the last chief executive officer Duncan Rudkin could not have come at a worse time for continuity but with the appointment of Alison White as an interim CEO and with the newly-elected chair GDP Alison Lockyer it boded well for the future.