Surinder Singh Hundle
Introduction
Surinder Singh Hundle is a dentist formerly registered with the General Dental Council (registration number 65528) who owned and worked at his own dental practice. On 25 June 2024, after a public hearing, a GDC Professional Conduct Committee found his fitness to practise currently impaired by reason of misconduct and directed that his name be erased from the register — struck off. MedicWatch records the erasure as 28 June 2024.
The charges included two criminal convictions for driving with excess alcohol, from 2007 and 2009; the Committee treated neither — then 17 and 14 years old — as grounds for current impairment. What ended his registration was recent, unremediated misconduct surrounding his departure from the practice he owned.
Background Information
Mr Hundle owned and worked at the dental practice where the events took place; two associate dentists — Colleague A, an associate orthodontist, and Colleague B — gave evidence.
He also had substantial prior regulatory history. In February 2011 the GDC’s Investigating Committee imposed an unpublished warning on his registration over the standard of care provided to a patient between February and June 2010. In March 2011 a PCC found his fitness to practise impaired by misconduct arising from an alleged inappropriate sexual relationship with a patient in the approximate period 2001 to 2008, suspending him for three months. In February to April 2016 a further PCC found misconduct over his care of a patient but no current impairment, because he had demonstrated insight and remediation.
The hearing went ahead without him: with notice undelivered at his registered address but copies sent by post and email, the Committee found service properly effected and determined it fair to proceed in his absence. He was not present or represented.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Adjudicated vs. alleged. Two heads of charge rest on criminal convictions on the court record: Mr Hundle pleaded guilty at magistrates’ courts in 2007 and 2009. Everything else below is a regulatory finding made on the balance of probabilities by a GDC Professional Conduct Committee — not a criminal conviction. He was not present or represented; the findings were made in his absence.
The conviction charges were found proved. On 16 February 2007 Mr Hundle appeared before South Western Magistrates’ Court and, having pleaded guilty, was convicted of driving with excess alcohol (offence 11 February 2007); he was fined £1,000 and disqualified from driving for 12 months, reducible to nine months on completing a stipulated course. On 12 October 2009 he appeared before West London Magistrates’ Court and, again having pleaded guilty, was convicted of the same offence; a breath sample recorded 104 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres, above the prescribed limit, and he was fined £3,000 and disqualified for 44 months. The 2009 conviction was proved by a certified Memorandum of Conviction; for 2007, where none was produced, the Committee relied on unchallenged police evidence.
Four further charges concerned his departure from the practice. The Committee found proved that he failed to provide Colleague A with patient details requested by email on or around 14 April 2019 and 13 July 2019; that he failed to tell Colleague A, due to treat patients at the practice on 11 July 2019, that it would not open — Colleague A learned of the closure only on arriving; and that from on or around 12 April 2019 he left patients without continuity of care, citing patient complaints and Colleague A’s evidence that he had to arrange care for patients Mr Hundle had left.
The final charge was non-cooperation: from 30 September 2019 to 7 February 2022 — over two years — Mr Hundle failed to provide the GDC with evidence of his indemnity insurance arrangements despite a 30 September 2019 deadline. Notably, the patient-details and practice-closure charges, though proved, did not amount to misconduct — a falling short, but not a falling far short, since there had been no adverse clinical impact on the patients. The non-cooperation and continuity-of-care findings did amount to misconduct.
Public Reaction and Consequences
On impairment, the Committee separated the strands. The 2007 and 2009 convictions did not make his fitness to practise currently impaired: it had regard to the considerable time elapsed and considered the findings of fact a sufficient regulatory disposal. The misconduct was different. With no evidence of insight or remediation before it — no adverse inference was drawn from his absence, but there was nothing suggesting either — the Committee found the public at unwarranted risk of harm, and held that impairment was also required to maintain public confidence in the profession and the regulatory process.
In mitigation it noted evidence of difficulties Mr Hundle may have been experiencing at the time, that his conduct was not motivated by financial gain, and evidence of his historical skills and innovations in practice. In aggravation, it found his omissions entailed a risk of harm to patients, that the lost continuity of care breached the trust patients placed in him, and that the indemnity failure was a “blatant and wilful disregard of the GDC”, sustained over a considerable period and unaccompanied by any insight. His regulatory history was given little weight for its age, though the earlier findings — apart from the 2011 sexual-relationship findings — engaged similar issues.
Working down the sanctions ladder, it found no action, a reprimand, conditional registration and even suspension insufficient: his conduct suggested a “harmful deep-seated professional attitudinal problem”. Erasure was the only proportionate sanction; his interim suspension was revoked and replaced with an immediate suspension pending the erasure taking effect.
Current Status
Mr Hundle is erased from the GDC register — struck off. His registration was suspended from deemed service of the decision, with the erasure to be recorded 28 days later unless he appealed; MedicWatch records the erasure as 28 June 2024. The hearings service page records the Committee’s 25 June 2024 order of erasure with immediate suspension.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The erasure ends Hundle’s GDC registration and, with it, the practice he owned. The sharpest fact is the arc of his regulatory history: in 2016 a PCC found misconduct but no current impairment because he had demonstrated insight and remediation; in 2024, with no evidence of either, the same framework produced erasure. The convictions, the Committee was explicit, were too distant to ground impairment — it was the unremediated misconduct and the two-year failure to engage with the GDC that cost him his registration.