The CMA is studying private dentistry, prices included. Your website is where patients meet yours.

Private dentistry is the subject of an open market study, and your website is where a patient, a competitor or a complainant sees what your practice claims and charges.

That is not a scare tactic. It is a description of what is currently happening.

The CMA is studying private dentistry, and is due to report by March 2027

In March 2026 the Competition and Markets Authority opened a market study into private dentistry, a market it cited from an independent source as valued at £8.4 billion in 2023 to 2024. Its final report is due by the statutory deadline of 4 March 2027.

The areas it proposed on opening include how people "compare providers, and understand the information they receive from dental professionals", and "Treatment prices: How prices for private dental services have changed compared with inflation". Its update of 17 July 2026 confirmed the scope and set out no findings.

The figures the CMA cited on opening, drawn from independent sources rather than from its own findings: the price of an initial consultation rose more than 23% between 2022 and 2024, and routine check-ups for existing patients by more than 14%. The study has not reported, so these figures are context, not conclusions.

Now consider where a patient actually encounters your pricing. It is your website. The study is sector-level — in the CMA's words, "an examination of how the market is working for consumers" — so it does not follow that any one practice's site is under examination. What does follow is that how patients compare providers and understand prices is part of what is being asked, and your website is the part of the answer you control.

Showing prices clearly is a straightforward build decision, and it is one you can make now rather than after the final report.

Four regulators, one website

Aesthetic clinics deal principally with one problem, applied strictly. Dentistry deals with four bodies at once, and they overlap on the same pages.

Plus UK GDPR for patient data and PECR for marketing messages, including any recall that carries marketing. A practice site can be perfectly in order on two or three of these and quietly wrong on the rest, because the four bodies reach the same pages from different directions and nothing forces you to read them together.

Three things worth checking on your own site

"Specialist", used where it is not supported. The GDC says dentists "can only use the title 'specialist' if they are on that list", and its guidance on advertising says a dentist who is not on a specialist list must not describe themselves as "specialising in" a treatment. Some fields have no list at all: the GDC's advertising checklist gives implantology as the example, so "our implant specialists" cannot be supported. It is checkable by anyone, including a complainant: "Members of the public can find a specialist by searching the GDC register." Our build standard checks every instance of the word.

Incentivised review campaigns. Since April 2025 the DMCC Act 2024 has made commissioning or publishing fake reviews a banned practice, along with concealing that a review was incentivised, and the CMA can determine a breach and fine directly — up to 10% of global turnover or £300,000, whichever is higher. Google's Maps content policy goes further: it does not allow businesses to offer incentives in exchange for posting any review. A review flow that asks every patient at the right moment, with nothing attached, satisfies both.

Before-and-after images without marketing consent. Consent to treatment is not consent to publish. CAP's advice of 5 June 2025 adds that CAP and the ASA treat these photos like testimonials: marketers should hold signed and dated proof that they are genuine and have not been manipulated, and the photos should not exaggerate what the treatment achieves.

What we build

• The website. Mobile-first, built in Next.js — with page size checked automatically as the site is built, and load time measured against a two-second budget that is settled in the field rather than on a build server. A patient in discomfort, on a phone, is not in a patient frame of mind.
• Pricing pages built for comparison. Clear treatment pricing, presented so a patient can compare providers and understand what they will pay.
• Credentials, displayed properly. Named clinicians with their GDC numbers, which the GDC's advertising guidance requires on information containing a registrant's name, and CQC registration, shown on the page rather than buried in a footer.
• Recall and reminder automation. Wired into your practice management system, so reminders, recall to patients who agreed to it, reactivation of patients you may lawfully message and post-treatment follow-up run without the front desk chasing.
• Local SEO. Technical foundations, treatment and area pages mapped to real UK search demand, and a compliant review flow feeding it.

What we are not

We are not solicitors and we are not a dental compliance consultancy. We are a web and automation studio that has read the standards, and our build standard is written to respect them — a deliberate specialisation, and still short of professional advice. Anything with real regulatory consequence should go past someone qualified to give it.

Where to next

Start with a free audit. It is five prioritised findings on search, speed and conversion, narrated over your own site. For a dental practice it adds a rules check on a fixed list of points: how prices, reviews and health claims are shown, GDC details and use of the word "specialist". It reports what the site shows or leaves out, and it gives no legal verdict. The findings are yours whether or not you work with us.

Our guides go further, each quoting its sources with dates: what the GDC's guidance asks a practice website to show and a page-by-page checklist for clinic websites.