This site sets out what UK regulators require to appear on the website of a regulated practice: a dental surgery, a veterinary practice, a solicitors' firm, a GP surgery, an optical practice, a physiotherapy clinic, a care home or a nursery.

A reference, not an audit

Each page names a requirement, the body it comes from and the date the underlying guidance was last checked. It does not assess whether any particular website meets that requirement. That judgement stays with the practice and, where the situation calls for it, with a qualified adviser or the relevant professional body.

Who it is written for

The pages are written for whoever is responsible for the website day to day: a practice manager, a registered manager, a partner or principal, and often someone who did not build the site themselves and has no background in web development. Terms that are specific to websites are explained where they appear, and terms that belong to the reader's own regulator are used the way that regulator uses them.

A reader can go straight to the section that covers their own profession, find the requirement, check the date it was last verified against, and stop there.

A website for a dental practice, a veterinary practice, a solicitors' firm or a care setting is not just a page describing what the business does. Whoever is responsible for it usually holds a professional registration or a statutory duty as well, and that duty does not stop at the practice door. It follows them onto the website, into whatever page lists the team, the fees or the registration details.

The General Dental Council, the Care Quality Commission, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the other bodies that govern regulated practices each publish their own current guidance on what a practice website should contain, and each expects that content to stay correct once it is published. A registration number, a fee schedule, a transparency requirement: these are not background information. They are the kind of detail a regulator, a patient or a client may check against.

The detail that goes out of date first

A clinician joins a practice and a registration number gets added to the site. A clinician leaves, a fee changes, a service is withdrawn, and the page describing it does not always change at the same time. On most business websites that is simply an old page. On a regulated practice's website, it is an old regulated detail, sitting on a page a reader may take at face value.

Who carries this

• Practice managers and registered managers keeping the website in line with what the regulator expects
• Partners and principals responsible for the practice as a whole
• Newly registered clinicians who find their own details missing or wrong on a practice site
• Practices opening or rebranding, setting the website up correctly from the outset

What this site does

This site sets out what each UK regulator requires on a practice website, naming the body and the date its guidance was checked. It does not build or host a website itself.

webdesign.uk

webdesign.uk is where the Living Site is built and hosted. Where this site mentions the Living Site, that is the product webdesign.uk builds, and webdesign.uk does not take on sites built elsewhere at present.

livingsites.uk, livesites.uk and minisitemaker.co.uk

These are separate addresses. Nothing on this page depends on what is held there, and a reader working through the requirements set out here has everything needed without visiting any of the three.