The General Dental Council (GDC) sets out what a dental practice needs to say about the people treating patients wherever the practice puts itself in front of the public, including its website. The requirements below come from the GDC's Standards for the Dental Team and its guidance on advertising, checked against GDC guidance on [date]. The GDC's own current guidance is the authority on what a dental website must show.

Registration numbers for every dentist named

Where a website names a dentist, whether principal, associate or any other clinician on the GDC register, it needs to show that person's registration number next to their name. A patient reading the page should be able to take that number to the GDC's own register and find the same person listed against it.

This is one of the parts of a dental website that changes most often, because a clinician joining or leaving the practice changes the list of names and numbers on the page. Checking that every name on the site has a registration number, and that every number belongs to someone still working there, is one of the items on the annual review checklist.

Names, titles and qualifications

Alongside the registration number, the GDC expects the name, title and qualifications shown for each dentist to reflect what that person actually holds. A title such as specialist carries a specific meaning under GDC guidance and is used only where the person named is entered on the relevant specialist list.

Claims about treatment

Where a website describes a treatment or its likely result, GDC guidance on advertising asks that the claim be one the practice can support. This covers before-and-after images, described outcomes, and any comparison drawn with other treatments or other providers.

Nothing on this page is legal, regulatory or clinical advice. A practice that wants a view on whether its own website meets these requirements should raise it with the GDC directly or with a professional adviser.

A dental practice that carries out an activity covered by the Health and Social Care Act 2008 registers with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) if it operates in England, and once registered, it is inspected and given a rating. That rating has to appear on the practice's own website, somewhere a patient looking for it will actually find it.

What the rating on the website has to show

CQC rates a registered dental practice as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate, and publishes a short account of what the inspection found alongside it. The version on the practice's website has to match the rating CQC published.

What happens when the rating changes

A practice is re-inspected from time to time, and the rating can move in either direction. When it does, the copy on the practice's website needs updating to match, because a rating that has since changed is no longer the one CQC published against the practice's name. The annual website review a practice manager can actually run is one place this kind of change gets caught before it sits unnoticed for a year.

Where this does not apply

A dental practice that does not carry out an activity regulated under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 is not registered with CQC and has no rating to publish. Where it is unclear whether a practice is registered, the CQC's own register is the place to check.

This reflects CQC guidance on displaying ratings on a provider's own website. The CQC's own current guidance is the authority on what has to appear.

A patient looking at a dental practice website wants to know, before they book, roughly what a course of treatment will cost. Whether that figure can simply be stated or needs some explanation depends on whether the treatment is NHS or private, because the two are handled very differently.

NHS charges

NHS dental treatment in England is charged in fixed bands set nationally, and each band covers a defined group of treatments. A practice offering NHS treatment has no discretion over these figures, so the website's job is to show the current band charges correctly and say which treatments sit in each band. When the national bands change, the figures on the page need to change with them, and a page still showing last year's amounts is showing the wrong ones.

Private fees

Private fees are set by the practice, and the General Dental Council (GDC) expects patients to be able to find out what their treatment will cost before it starts. Where the site quotes a fee for a common private treatment, such as a check-up or a course of whitening, that figure needs to match what the practice actually charges. A patient who books on the strength of a published price is entitled to expect that price.

Where a practice is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the same expectation runs through the CQC's fundamental standards on fees: a person paying for their own care should be given clear information about the cost before treatment begins. A website that publishes a price list is putting part of that information in front of the patient in advance.

Price claims and the ASA

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) treats a website as an advertisement, so any price mentioned on it is a price claim and has to hold up under the same rules as an advert in a newspaper or on a poster. A figure introduced with the word "from" has to be a price a patient can actually get. Where a fee carries a condition, such as a new-patient offer or a full course rather than a single visit, that condition has to sit next to the figure rather than wait in the small print.

Fee pages tend to fall behind because a change to the NHS bands or to the private price list happens on a schedule set elsewhere. The annual review checklist covers this alongside the other pages that go out of date quietly.

The GDC, the CQC and the ASA each publish their own current guidance, and that guidance is the authority on what a particular website needs to show.

A dental practice website is expected to tell a patient how to complain, and to do it before a complaint is ever needed. The General Dental Council (GDC) sets out what a written complaints procedure has to cover, and expects patients to be able to find it. The GDC's own current guidance is the authority on what the procedure must contain.

What the complaints section has to tell a patient

A patient reading the page should be able to work out three things: who to contact first, what happens if the practice's own response does not resolve things, and how long each stage is expected to take. Where the page only says "if you have a complaint, please let us know" without naming a route beyond the practice itself, it stops short of what the GDC's guidance describes.

• How to raise a complaint with the practice directly, and who it goes to
• What the practice does with it, and roughly how long a response takes
• Where to take the complaint if the practice's answer does not settle it

NHS and private treatment follow different routes

Where a patient was treated on the NHS, the further step after the practice is the NHS complaints procedure, handled through NHS England or the relevant integrated care board. Where the treatment was private, the further step is the Dental Complaints Service, which the GDC runs to look at complaints about private dental care in England, Scotland and Wales. A website that only names one of these routes leaves out the patients whose treatment falls under the other.

Where the Care Quality Commission fits in

Where a practice is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the regulator requires it to run an effective system for receiving and acting on complaints, under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. That requirement is about the system the practice operates day to day, but an inspector reviewing that system may well check whether the online version matches what actually happens when a complaint comes in.

A complaints page tends to go quietly out of date: a named contact leaves, a route changes, and the page keeps repeating what it said the year before. The annual review checklist covers this alongside the other pages that need a periodic look.

A dental practice website holds two kinds of fact that move faster than the page does: who works there, and what things cost. Neither changes on a schedule, so the site can drift for months between one update and the next inspection without anyone deciding it should.

Clinician registration numbers

A dentist's General Dental Council (GDC) registration number on the site is only correct for as long as that dentist still works at the practice. A clinician joins and the number gets added; a clinician leaves, and unless someone remembers to take the entry down, the page carries a registration number for a person no longer treating patients there.

Fee schedules

Where the site lists a price, that figure is the one a patient may rely on, whatever the practice actually charges on the day. A private fee that changes, or an NHS band that's updated, leaves the published figure wrong until someone edits the page, and a fee worked into a treatment description is easier to miss than one sitting on its own page.

CQC registration status

Where a practice is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the address the registration covers, or the status the site states, can move on with a change to the practice while the wording on the website stays as it was first written.

Complaints contacts

A complaints procedure names a person or a route for a patient to follow, and that name turns over with staff in the same way a clinician's registration number does. It's one of the easiest details to leave stale, because updating it depends on someone remembering the complaints page is there to update.

None of this needs a new inspection to trigger it: a staff change or a price change is enough. The annual review checklist sets out a way to work through these details on a fixed schedule.