Dear Colleagues
The last twelve months have gone in a blink and LDC Conference is now just around the corner.
I look forward to seeing you all in Birmingham. Conference can only happen with your support and that of all of our LDCs. I thank you all for your motions and the hard work that has gone into drafting these. I thank you also for being supportive in amending these where it was felt necessary, and apologise we have not been able to accommodate all of the motions.
I hope you approve of the slightly new format of having explanatory narratives accompanying the motions and welcome your comments around this. My idea behind this is that these narratives will help give background information and context to the motions and one hopes, this will enhance your informed contribution to the debating and voting process. Hopefully, these narratives will also help to reduce ambiguities too and this should help to reduce the need for time consuming clarification. Time is always precious at this event and I will do my best to ensure we are able to get through all of the motions by the end of the Friday morning session.
I will take this opportunity to refer all delegates to the Standing Orders as a reminder of correct conduct of conference. Those presenting a motion are limited to 3 minutes with the opportunity of right of return to the rostrum for 1 more minute, maximum, if needed. So that the conference remains dynamic, we will enforce this strictly. All speakers are encouraged to expand on their supplied narrative and not articulate this verbatim when they move their motion. To simply recite the narrative would be deemed a waste of time and failure to utilise an opportunity to expand on why your motion should get unanimous support.
It remains for me to thank your agenda committee and the BDA support staff for all their immeasurable support and hard work over the past year. Putting a conference like this takes a very large amount of time and effort. On behalf of the agenda committee, I would also like to thank in particular, your Treasurer, Will Newport, for his unstinting hard work and very significant contributions to the committee. Will is stepping down from the role after three years. His boots will indeed be big ones to fill. Not only has he been an excellent and diligent Treasurer, he has brought youth and a vast contemporary knowledge to the agenda committee, not least with reference to IG matters. I encourage those of you who feel you have such qualities to stand for the various roles up for grabs, nominations will be taken from the floor on the Thursday morning.
Conference papers at the event
Papers for the Conference are available here.
Voting permissions
To ensure correct voting permissions at the Conference please check you are registered in the correct capacity (delegate list features in the Papers). If you have registered for the conference as a GDPC member but no one is attending from your LDC it is recommended you amend your registration to that of LDC Representative so you can vote on your LDCs behalf. Please contact Fiona Feltham as soon as possible (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. / 020 7563 6876) to update your voting permissions. The same applies if you are due to attend as the Observer, but a change in circumstances has found you taking on the role of Representative.
Conference Dinner
The Conference Dinner will take place a short walk away from the conference venue/headquarters hotel at the Birmingham Town Hall. The evening begins with a drinks reception at 19:15 with dinner due to commence at 20:00. Dress code is black tie. If you have not yet booked tickets via the Eventbrite booking system, again please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to ensure you can be accommodated.
Travel and expenses: Here are the links to information about travel arrangements and expense claims.
To help you with your travel plans it may be useful to highlight that lunch is from 12:30 on the Thursday, with Conference proceedings commencing at 13:30. Conference closes on the Friday at 13:00 and lunch is then served until 14:00.
Hotels: Information regarding hotels is available here.
Venues: Information about the venues and directions can be found here.
Sponsors and exhibitors
We are joined this year by another impressive array of companies, with Dental Elite kindly supporting us as Gold sponsor. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsor and the exhibitors for their support.
Please do contact me if you have any queries.
I look forward to seeing you all in a couple of weeks’ time.
Best wishes, Vijay
Chair of LDC Conference 2019