In June 2026, the General Dental Council launched a consultation on proposals to replace the familiar Standards for the Dental Team — often referred to as the “silver book” — with a new Framework for Professionalism.
The consultation closed on 31 August 2026. The GDC subsequently confirmed that it had received more than 230 responses and is now analysing them, with recommendations due to go to Council later in 2026. No final framework has yet been approved, so the existing Standards for the Dental Team remain the professional standards dental teams should currently follow.
This distinction matters.
The proposed framework is not yet a new rulebook. But it offers a useful indication of how the GDC wants professional regulation to evolve, away from detailed prescription and towards principles, professional judgement and patient-centred decision-making.
For consent, that direction is particularly relevant.
Why is the GDC considering a change?
The current Standards for the Dental Team were introduced in 2013 and are organised around nine principles.
The GDC says its research and engagement identified concerns that the existing format can feel overly prescriptive and may not always help dental professionals apply their judgement confidently in complex, real-world situations. Its proposed alternative is intended to be simpler, more accessible and more adaptable as dentistry changes.
Importantly, the regulator has also been explicit about what the proposal is not intended to do.
It is not presented as a lowering of professional standards or a reduction in the expectations placed on dental professionals. Rather, the GDC says it wants to change how those expectations are communicated and applied.
That is an important difference.
Moving away from a detailed list of requirements does not necessarily mean less responsibility. In some situations, greater emphasis on professional judgement may require clinicians to think more carefully about why a particular course of action is appropriate for an individual patient.
What would the proposed framework look like?
The GDC's proposal moves towards four broad Principles of Professionalism, supported by Expectations, statutory Professional Guidance and practical resources such as case studies, blogs and videos.
The four principles currently described by the GDC are:
- Treat patients with respect: including supporting patients to make informed decisions about their care.
- Practise safely and effectively: using appropriate knowledge and skills to achieve the right outcome for patients.
- Maintain trust in the profession: acting with integrity and maintaining the confidence of patients, colleagues and the public.
- Work in partnership with others: supporting effective teamwork and protecting the wellbeing of patients and the dental team.
This is a significant simplification compared with nine separate principles and their associated detailed standards.
But simplicity should not be confused with vagueness.
The intention is that the high-level principles would sit alongside professional guidance and practical supporting material, helping clinicians apply them to the circumstances in front of them rather than treating every professional decision as a checklist exercise.
What does this have to do with consent?
Potentially, quite a lot.
The proposed first principle, Treat patients with respect, specifically describes supporting patients to make informed decisions about their care.
That language reflects something increasingly important in modern consent: the quality of the process cannot be judged solely by whether a particular form was signed or whether a standard list of risks was delivered.
Meaningful consent requires professional judgement.
A clinician needs to consider which risks might be material to a particular patient, which reasonable alternatives require discussion, what that patient is hoping to achieve, whether they have understood the information provided and whether anything about their communication needs or circumstances changes how that conversation should take place.
The current GDC standards already require clinicians to communicate in a way patients can understand, take individual views and communication needs into account and obtain valid consent before treatment.
A principles-based framework could place even greater emphasis on the thinking behind those actions.
From “Have I complied?” to “Was this right for this patient?”
There is a subtle but important difference between a rules-based and a principles-based approach.
A rules-based question might be:
Have I provided the required information and obtained a signature?
A principles-based question goes further:
Have I supported this particular patient to make a genuinely informed decision?
Both documentation and process matter. But the second question brings the individual patient firmly back into view.
Consider two patients being offered exactly the same implant treatment.
One is primarily concerned about surgical risk. Another is a professional musician concerned about time away from work. A third may be particularly worried about aesthetics, treatment longevity or the possibility of needing further surgery.
The underlying procedure may be identical, but what is material to the decision can differ.
That principle is already reflected in the law following Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board, where the Supreme Court established a duty to take reasonable care to ensure patients are aware of material risks associated with recommended treatment and reasonable alternative or variant treatments. Materiality has to be considered in the circumstances of the individual patient; it cannot simply be reduced to a percentage.
Changing the GDC's regulatory framework would not change that legal principle.
What it may change is how explicitly professional judgement and individual context sit at the centre of regulatory guidance.
Good consent may become less about paperwork, not less well documented
One possible misunderstanding deserves addressing.
A move towards principles and away from prescriptive rules should not be interpreted as an argument for weaker documentation.
Professional judgement still needs to be capable of being understood afterwards.
If a clinician recommends one option over another, adapts their discussion because of a patient's particular priorities or identifies a material issue requiring additional explanation, a contemporaneous clinical record remains important.
The objective is not documentation for documentation's sake.
It is evidence of the professional process:
What was considered? What was discussed? What mattered to the patient? What did they understand? Why was the eventual decision reasonable?
That distinction aligns closely with the direction of travel suggested by the GDC's proposed framework.
What might this mean for practice owners?
For practice owners, the proposal raises another interesting question.
If regulation becomes more principles-based, simply handing every clinician a policy and expecting identical behaviour may become less satisfactory.
Practices will still need consistency, but consistency should support professional judgement rather than suppress it.
A good consent system should therefore achieve two things at once:
standardise the fundamentals, so that important information is not routinely missed;
while
preserving individualisation, so clinicians can respond appropriately to the patient in front of them.
That balance is particularly important in larger practices where several clinicians may explain the same treatment in very different ways.
Structured workflows can reduce unwanted variation. They should not attempt to turn consent into an automated process.
For practice owners looking to create a more consistent approach across their teams, Clear Consent for Practice Owners provides a framework for standardising how patient information and consent workflows are delivered while preserving the treating clinician's responsibility for the final consent discussion.
Technology should support judgement, not replace it
The GDC's proposed direction is also relevant to the increasing use of technology in dental consent.
Digital tools are particularly good at consistency.
They can help ensure patients receive important information, provide opportunities to revisit that information outside the surgery and create a clearer record of the steps completed before treatment.
Clear Consent was developed around this supporting role.
For individual clinicians, digital consent forms, patient-facing AI consent videos and comprehension checks can provide a structured foundation for the consent process. Multi-language functionality can make information more accessible, while e-signatures and an organised audit trail can improve documentation.
But no platform should attempt to make the professional judgement on behalf of the clinician.
A video cannot decide which risk is particularly material to the patient sitting in front of you.
A consent form cannot determine whether their expectations are realistic.
A comprehension check cannot replace the opportunity to ask questions or the clinician's responsibility to satisfy themselves that the patient understands their options.
Used properly, digital consent should create more space for meaningful clinical discussion, not less.
What should dental teams do now?
At this stage, practices should not rewrite their consent policies on the assumption that the new framework has already arrived.
It has not.
The consultation is closed, but the GDC is still analysing the responses and has said that recommendations will be considered by Council later in 2026. Until any new framework is formally approved and implemented, dental professionals should continue to work to the existing Standards for the Dental Team.
There is, however, no reason to wait before considering the wider message.
Dental teams can already ask whether their consent processes:
- treat patients as individuals rather than recipients of standard information;
- make reasonable alternatives genuinely understandable;
- identify what matters to the patient;
- accommodate different communication needs;
- give patients sufficient opportunity to ask questions and consider their decision;
- support clinicians in exercising professional judgement; and
- create a clear contemporaneous record of that process.
Those principles make sense regardless of what the final regulatory framework ultimately looks like.
A potentially important change in emphasis
There is still an important stage to come.
The consultation responses may lead to amendments, and the eventual framework will need to be considered and approved before it can replace the current standards. Dental professionals should therefore be cautious about treating any consultation proposal as settled regulatory policy.
But the direction is noteworthy.
The GDC appears to be moving towards a model that places professional judgement, patient context and learning more visibly at the centre of professional regulation.
For consent, that should feel familiar.
The strongest consent has never been the longest form or the most exhaustive generic risk list.
It is the process that helps the clinician understand the patient, helps the patient understand the decision and creates a clear record of how that decision was reached.
Whatever the final Framework for Professionalism looks like, that remains a sound foundation for clinical practice.
More than a signature
Clear Consent helps dental professionals provide clearer patient information, create more consistent consent workflows and maintain an organised record of the consent process — while keeping the individual clinician-patient conversation at its centre.
Explore Clear Consent for dentists or get started with Clear Consent.
For further articles on consent, patient communication and professional risk, visit the Clear Consent blog.
Source note
This article discusses the General Dental Council's proposed Framework for Professionalism consultation, which opened on 2 June 2026 and closed on 31 August 2026.
At the time of publication, the consultation responses were still being analysed and the proposed framework had not replaced the existing Standards for the Dental Team.
The principal sources are:
GDC: consultation announcement
GDC: consultations and responses
GDC: Principles of Professionalism
GDC: current Standards for the Dental Team
UK Supreme Court: Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board
This article is written for general educational purposes and should not be treated as individual legal, regulatory or clinical advice. Readers should check the original GDC material for subsequent consultation outcomes or changes.