Nobody opens a dental practice website expecting to find law-breaking. But run the checklist below against ten UK practice sites and most will fail something: a complaints procedure that exists only as a paper leaflet at reception, a beautifully designed team page with no GDC numbers on it, a "last updated" date that was never added, a CQC rating displayed nowhere. None of it is malicious. All of it is checkable — by patients, by defence organisations, by inspectors, and by anyone minded to complain.
The good news is that this is the cheapest compliance problem your practice has. Almost everything on this list is an hour of edits, not a project.
The short version
- The GDC's Principles of Ethical Advertising set out exactly what a practice website must display — practice details, NHS/private status, complaints route, a last-updated date, and each clinician's qualification and GDC number.
- In England, displaying your CQC rating on the website is a legal duty (Regulation 20A, since April 2015), within 21 days of a report.
- Titles are regulated: "specialist" only for those on a GDC specialist list; "Dr" only where it cannot mislead.
- Add the general layers — UK GDPR privacy and cookies, and accessibility — and you have the complete picture.
Layer 1: What the GDC requires on the website itself
The GDC's ethical advertising guidance treats your website as advertising, and it is specific about the minimum contents. Two lists matter — one for the practice, one for the people.
The practice information
- The name and geographic address at which the dental service is established
- Whether the practice is NHS only, mixed, or wholly private — stated clearly, not left to inference
- Contact details including a telephone number and an email address
- The GDC's address and contact details, or a link to gdc-uk.org
- The complaints procedure, including who patients can contact if they are not satisfied with your response — the relevant NHS body for NHS treatment, and the Dental Complaints Service for private treatment
- The date the website was last updated
The people information
For every dental professional providing care who is mentioned on the site:
- Their professional qualification and the country it was awarded in
- Their GDC registration number
- No honorary qualifications or letters relating to association memberships and fellowships after their names
The guidance also draws two lines that catch practices out. Websites must not compare a clinician's skills or qualifications with other dental professionals — "the best implant dentist in Surrey" is not marketing flair, it is a breach. And everything must be kept current: a team page still listing an associate who left in 2024 is itself a compliance failure, not just an embarrassment.
Layer 2: Titles — the two words that generate complaints
"Specialist" is a protected claim. Only clinicians on the relevant GDC specialist list — orthodontics, oral surgery, endodontics and the rest — may use it. A general dentist who does a great deal of implant work is "a dentist with a special interest in implants", and the difference between those phrasings is the difference between a website and a fitness-to-practise referral.
"Dr" is permitted as a courtesy title for dentists, provided its use cannot mislead a patient into thinking they are seeing a medical doctor. In practice: use it consistently, state the actual qualification (BDS, and where it was awarded) alongside, and the ambiguity disappears.
Layer 3: The CQC rating (England)
Since 1 April 2015, Regulation 20A of the Health and Social Care Act regulations has made displaying performance ratings a legal duty. For your website that means:
- If the practice has received a rating — Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement or Inadequate — it must be shown on every website maintained by or on behalf of the practice
- Alongside it, where on cqc.org.uk the full assessment can be found
- Within 21 calendar days of the inspection report
- Displayed "conspicuously and legibly" — a footer link labelled "regulatory stuff" does not meet the spirit, and inspectors use CQC's own materials as the benchmark
The painless route is CQC's official website widget, which shows the current rating and links the report automatically — use it and this entire layer is handled. Not yet rated? Then there is nothing to display, though the "Regulated by CQC" graphic is available. And note the devolved nations run their own systems — Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales and the RQIA — with their own display arrangements.
Layer 4: The general law that applies to every practice site
UK GDPR and PECR: a privacy notice covering what patient data the site collects and why; a cookie notice with genuine consent for non-essential cookies; and forms that do not leak. That last one deserves a flag of its own: a contact form that emails symptoms and medical details around in plain text is a data-protection problem wearing a web-design costume — the same issue we dissected for US practices in the HIPAA contact form guide, and the UK GDPR expects equivalent care with health data.
Accessibility: not yet a single statute for private UK practice sites, but the Equality Act's reasonable-adjustment duty applies, and if you treat EU patients the European Accessibility Act is already enforceable. Accessible sites also convert better, which makes this the rare compliance item with a commercial upside.
The one-page checklist
| Item | Mandated by | Where to put it |
|---|---|---|
| Practice name & geographic address | GDC | Footer, contact page |
| NHS / mixed / private status | GDC | Homepage or fees page, stated plainly |
| Phone & email | GDC | Header/footer, contact page |
| GDC contact details or link | GDC | Footer or a compliance/"GDC" page |
| Complaints procedure + escalation contacts | GDC | Its own linked page — not a hidden PDF |
| Date website last updated | GDC | Footer |
| Each clinician: qualification, country, GDC number | GDC | Team page, in every bio |
| No honorary letters, no comparisons, "specialist" only if listed | GDC | Site-wide copy check |
| CQC rating + link to report (England) | Regulation 20A | Homepage widget or prominent footer, within 21 days |
| Privacy & cookie notices, secure forms | UK GDPR / PECR | Footer links; form handling reviewed |
| Social posts: treatment-suitability caveat | GDC | Wherever treatments are promoted |
The one-hour fix, in order
- Footer first
Address, phone, email, GDC link, last-updated date, privacy and complaints links. Five of the requirements die in one edit.
- Complaints page
A plain page: how to raise a concern with the practice, who handles it, and where to go next — the relevant NHS body for NHS care, the Dental Complaints Service for private. Link it from the footer. This is the single most commonly missing item.
- Team page audit
Every clinician: qualification, awarding country, GDC number. Remove leavers, remove honorary letters, and check every use of "specialist" against the register.
- CQC widget
Install it once; it stays current on its own.
- Copy sweep
Search the site for "best", "leading", "specialist" and superlatives comparing you to other professionals. Rewrite what you find. It usually reads better afterwards anyway.
Compliance and marketing are the same project here. GDC numbers on bios, honest titles, a visible rating, a clear complaints route — to a nervous patient comparing three practices at 10pm, these read as confidence. CQC's own well-led criteria look for exactly this evidence, and so, in their own way, do patients.
When we build or rebuild clinic websites, this checklist ships as standard — footer to team page — because retrofitting compliance costs more than including it. If you would like your current site checked against it, send us the URL; the audit takes us less time than it took you to read this.
Frequently asked questions
What are the GDC's website requirements in one list?
Practice name and address; NHS/mixed/private status; phone and email; GDC contact details or link; complaints procedure with escalation contacts; last-updated date; and for each clinician mentioned, qualification with country plus GDC number — with no honorary letters, no comparative claims, and "specialist" only for those on a specialist list.
Is the CQC rating on the website really a legal requirement?
In England, yes — Regulation 20A since April 2015, within 21 days of a report, on every site the practice maintains, with a pointer to the full report. The official CQC widget satisfies it in one install.
We are a private practice. Does the complaints requirement still apply?
Yes — and for private treatment the escalation contact to display is the Dental Complaints Service. NHS treatment routes to the relevant NHS body instead. Mixed practices display both.
Who actually checks any of this?
CQC inspectors reviewing well-led evidence, defence organisations advising members, the GDC when a complaint lands — and patients, constantly, informally. The trigger is usually a complaint or an inspection; the fix is cheaper before either.
Does this apply to other clinics too?
The CQC, GDPR and accessibility layers apply to any regulated provider in England. The GDC layer is dentistry's own, but doctors, physios and other regulated professions have close equivalents from their own regulators — the pattern of the checklist transfers.