Sector guide · Private GP services

What a private GP service’s website should show, and how to make it checkable.

The CQC’s rules on displaying ratings and giving fees in writing, and what the medical register holds, set apart from what our review of eight private GP clinics found.

By Stacey Smith··Sources fetched 28 September 2026

A patient choosing a private GP, and an AI assistant answering for them, want to know who would see them, whether that doctor is registered, whether the service is inspected and what an appointment costs. This guide sets out what the rules say about those facts, keeps that apart from what we found on clinics’ pages, and ends with a checklist. The CQC rules below apply in England. The GMC’s own website refused our automated requests, so the register facts here come from NHS England’s Data Dictionary, which describes the register.

The doctor: GMC number and the register

NHS Data Dictionary on the GMC register

A GMC reference number is allocated to every doctor on their first contact with the General Medical Council. The GMC List of Registered Medical Practitioners lists all doctors registered to practise in the UK, with each doctor’s reference number, name, primary medical degree, registration status, date of registration, any entry in the GP or Specialist Register and any publicly available fitness to practise history.

None of the sources we read requires a private GP website to show a GMC number or to link to the register. Showing the number beside each doctor’s name, linked to their entry on the GMC’s online medical register, is our advice: it lets a patient confirm who they will see.

The service: your CQC location page and rating

Regulation 20A (2014 Regulations) and the CQC’s guidance

The CQC inspects private GP services as independent doctor and clinic services. Where a provider has received a CQC rating, “every website maintained by or on behalf of” it must show the CQC’s website address, “the place on the Commission’s website where the most recent assessment” can be accessed, and the most recent rating, in a way that makes clear which premises or activities it relates to, with the date each rating was given.

The CQC says a provider has a provider page and a page for each location, that ratings must be displayed on websites within a set period after it publishes them, and that a service not yet inspected has no rating to display.

For a rated service, that is a link to the CQC page carrying the assessment, and the location page is where a location’s rating sits. A service with no rating yet has no rating to show; linking to its own location page is then our advice.

The price of an appointment

Regulation 19 (2009 Regulations) and the 2002 Regulations

Where a patient will pay for their care, the registered person must give them a written statement of the terms and conditions, “including as to the amount and method of payment of fees”, as far as reasonably practicable before the service starts.

Where a website refers to prices, the Electronic Commerce Regulations 2002 require them to be “indicated clearly and unambiguously” and to say whether they include tax and delivery costs.

Neither rule requires a price on the website; the first is a written statement to the patient. Stating the appointment price, what it includes and what costs extra is our advice.

What we checked

In our review of eight private GP clinics’ pages in Leeds and Manchester, captured on 27 September 2026, we read the page the search returned and, where linked, its fees page. We recorded what the pages showed; we did not check any CQC record or assess any clinic’s compliance.

What our review found

Five of the eight published a GP appointment price, and five said what the price includes or what costs extra. Four named a doctor in the page code, and two more only once scripts ran. One showed GMC reference numbers, for seven of the eight clinicians it named, and none linked to a doctor’s GMC register entry.

Seven named the CQC, three of them only in a logo description. One linked to the CQC page for its own location; two linked to pages for other locations run by the same provider. Two carried a visible date.

A checklist you can apply

Open your home page, your GP appointment page and your fees page. Items marked “rule” restate a requirement quoted above; items marked “our advice” go further than the rules. The tick boxes are only a reading aid and save nothing.

  • Name who a patient would see, with their GMC reference number. our advice
  • Link it to that doctor’s entry on the medical register. our advice
  • Show the CQC’s website address, a link to the page with your latest assessment, and the rating with its date, clear about which location it covers. rule
  • Not to another location run by the same provider. our advice
  • State it clearly, with what it includes and what costs extra, and whether it includes any tax. our advice
  • Give the written statement of terms, including fees and how to pay. rule
  • Say so on the page. our advice
  • Show when it was last reviewed and by which clinician. our advice
Download the review’s 10-question worksheet (CSV)Request a free visibility check

Sources

Each source was fetched on 28 September 2026; the requirements above are taken from these pages as they read that day. Rules change, so check the current version before relying on this guide.

This guide is a content aid, not legal or regulatory advice. It separates what the rules say from what our review found; where it recommends something the rules do not require, it says so. Have the responsible person at your service approve any change to regulated information before it goes live. Send corrections, with the passage, to hello@answari.co.uk.