Pamela Marie Sharples
Introduction
Pamela Marie Sharples is a dental care professional — a practice manager — formerly registered with the General Dental Council under registration number 124183. At a hearing on 29 July–7 August 2024, a Professional Conduct Committee (PCC) found her fitness to practise impaired by reason of misconduct, erased her from the register and imposed an immediate order of suspension. The hearings service lists the hearing as ending on 9 August 2024, the date MedicWatch records her as struck off.
Erasure was shaped by her history: suspended in 2021 for appropriating petty cash meant for staff Christmas parties, that suspension extended in 2022 and made indefinite in 2023, and no evidence of insight. The committee concluded that the two dishonesty findings together showed a pattern of behaviour and a deep-seated attitudinal problem, making her conduct fundamentally incompatible with registration.
Background Information
Sharples worked for a company referred to as Company A, which owns and runs two dental practices, as practice manager at Practice A from September 2019 to July 2021 and of Practice B from August 2020 to July 2021, and was seconded to an IT role with the same company from 7 June to 15 July 2021. She did not attend and was not represented: notice sent to her registered address by Royal Mail Special Delivery on 19 June 2024 was delivered on 22 June, and the committee, satisfied service had been properly effected and that she had voluntarily absented herself, proceeded in her absence — as earlier committees had in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Adjudicated vs. alleged. The findings below are regulatory findings made on the balance of probabilities by a GDC Professional Conduct Committee — not criminal convictions, and erasure is not a criminal record. The determination records that Miss Sharples was neither present nor represented. Most charges were found not proved, and are identified as such.
The first allegation — that she failed to make enquiries about the outcome of the GDC’s June 2021 fitness to practise proceedings against her so as not to prejudice her employment — failed. The committee accepted she knew of the proceedings, which ended in her suspension on 10 June 2021, but found her role did not depend on her fitness to practise and no obligation to disclose the outcome was shown; the charge as a whole was therefore not proved, taking the related integrity allegation with it.
A second allegation, that around December 2020 she deprived staff at Practice A and Practice B of the full benefit of their allocated £25 Christmas gift vouchers, also failed. Managers had been given considerable latitude; staff received wine, Prosecco, flowers and potted plants, and Sharples cooked a chilli con carne for Practice B staff. Not satisfied that the gifts fell short of the total allocation, the committee found this charge and a related integrity allegation not proved.
A third group alleged she authorised the early closure of Practice A on five dates across 27 May and 1–4 June 2021 without her employers’ knowledge. The alarm log showed the practice did close early, but the only evidence she authorised it was a single witness’s account, which it could not rely on given inconsistencies. All five closure allegations and the derivative charges — failure to notify, breach of procedure and misleading the employer — were not proved.
The proved charge concerned tooth whitening kits. The committee found that in or around December 2019 Sharples removed two kits from Practice A for her own use without paying, a colleague’s account corroborated by the December 2019 stock record and by notes on the practice’s R4 computer system later removed; she paid for other items, and at an investigatory meeting on 8 July 2021 accepted she had not paid for the kits. Her conduct was found to lack integrity and to be dishonest — she did not pay when she knew she was required to, applying the test in Ivey v Genting Casinos. An allegation that she took two further kits in January 2020 was not proved for lack of corroboration.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The committee found the proved facts amounted to misconduct — conduct far short of the standards expected of a registered dental professional, committed at work in a position of relative seniority, whose low cost did not detract from its seriousness. Honesty was a fundamental tenet of the profession, and such conduct was capable of bringing it into disrepute and would be viewed as deplorable by fellow practitioners.
On impairment, it noted there was no evidence of insight or remediation, and that the findings followed the earlier PCC finding of “conspicuously similar dishonest conduct”: appropriation of petty cash of approximately £280 and £300 designated for staff Christmas parties in October 2017 and October 2018, the 2017 appropriation being found misleading and dishonest. Suspended for 12 months in 2021, she was reviewed in 2022 and 2023, impairment persisting and the sanction extended, then made indefinite. The committee concluded her misconduct was liable to be repeated and public confidence would be undermined without an impairment finding.
On sanction, the only mitigating factor was that the findings related to a single, isolated event. In aggravation, the dishonesty involved a breach of trust, likely financial gain, was sustained over a protracted period, and followed previous adverse findings without insight. No action, a reprimand, conditions and suspension were all judged insufficient — conditions could not be formulated for an absent registrant — leaving erasure as the only proportionate sanction. An immediate suspension order was also imposed: her existing indefinite suspension was not irrevocable, and public protection could not rest on assuming it would persist.
Current Status
Sharples is erased from the GDC register. Her registration is suspended from the date notice is deemed served, and unless she appeals, erasure takes effect 28 days after deemed service; an appeal would not lift the immediate suspension meanwhile. The hearings service records that on 7 August 2024 the committee ordered her erasure with registration suspended immediately — MedicWatch records her as struck off on 9 August 2024.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The erasure removes Sharples from the register of dental care professionals, ending her ability to work on that basis in the UK. She was absent and unrepresented throughout both sets of proceedings, and the determination records no insight or remediation. Two dishonesty findings of a very similar kind three years apart were the decisive aggravation: the committee judged the pattern fundamentally incompatible with continued registration.