What Your Podiatry Website Must Say to Stay HCPC-Compliant

Why your website is a compliance document, not just a shopfront

Most podiatry websites are built to look nice and rank on Google. That matters, but for a Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) registrant your website is also a piece of advertising and a public statement about your practice. The regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) can all take an interest in what it says.

The good news: compliance and conversion pull in the same direction. The wording that keeps you on the right side of the rules, honest, specific and easy to verify, is exactly the wording that reassures a patient who is nervous about their feet. This guide walks through the five things your site must get right.

1. Protected titles: the wording that can land you in court

Under the Health and Social Care Act 2001, "podiatrist", "chiropodist" and "podiatric surgeon" are protected titles. Only someone on the HCPC Register may use them. Using a protected title when you are not registered, or letting a receptionist describe an unregistered colleague that way, is a criminal offence prosecuted by the HCPC. In England and Wales it carries an unlimited fine.

Practical rules for your copy:

• Only apply "podiatrist" or "chiropodist" to named, HCPC-registered clinicians.
• Do not use the titles loosely in service names, image captions or meta descriptions if the person delivering the service is not registered.
• "Foot health practitioner" is not a protected title and is not regulated by the HCPC. If your practice uses one, describe them accurately and do not imply they are a podiatrist.

Every registered podiatrist in the UK appears on the HCPC's online Register, which anyone can search free of charge. Your website should never contradict what that Register says.

2. Display your registration, and invite the check

There is no legal box that says "put your HCPC number in the footer", but displaying it is best practice and a quiet trust signal. Patients increasingly know to look for it.

On each clinician's profile, show:

• Full name as it appears on the Register.
• Their HCPC registration number.
• A short line inviting patients to verify them on the HCPC Register.
• Any Royal College of Podiatry membership, described honestly (membership is not the same as registration).

Registration renews on a two-year cycle, so keep the site current. A number for someone who has left, retired or lapsed is worse than no number at all.

3. Honest claims: what you cannot say

Your website is advertising, so two regimes apply at once: the HCPC's Standards of conduct, performance and ethics, which require you to be honest and to make sure your conduct justifies public trust; and the CAP Code, enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority, which requires health claims to be accurate and backed by evidence.

Wording to avoid:

• "Cure", "guaranteed results" or "100% success" for any condition.
• Claims that a treatment works for things it has not been shown to treat.
• Scaring patients into treatment, or exploiting anxiety about serious conditions such as diabetes-related foot problems.
• Before-and-after images that are not genuine and representative.

Wording that is safe and still sells: describe what a treatment involves, who it helps, and what a realistic outcome looks like. "We remove hard skin and treat corns to relieve pressure and pain" is honest, specific and persuasive. Precision reassures; hype does the opposite.

4. Cookies and privacy: foot data is special-category data

Health information, including anything a patient tells you about their feet, diabetes or mobility, is special-category data under UK GDPR. That raises the bar.

Your site needs:

• A plain-English privacy notice explaining what you collect, why, your lawful basis, how long you keep it and who to contact. Any booking or contact form that captures health details must link to it.
• A cookie approach that complies with PECR: non-essential cookies (analytics, marketing, embedded maps that track) need consent before they load. Strictly necessary cookies do not.
• Secure handling of enquiries. If a patient can message you about a medical concern, that channel should be treated as carefully as a clinical record.

This is one reason a WhatsApp for Business click-to-chat button, built into every Brightray podiatry website as standard, works well: patients reach you on a channel they trust, and you keep sensitive details out of an open web form until you are ready to take them properly.

Your HCPC website compliance checklist

How Brightray builds this in

A compliant site is not more expensive, it is just built by someone who has done it before. Every Brightray site is a fixed £500 with no monthly fees, and typically live in about seven days. For podiatrists that includes the structure above: clinician profiles with room for registration numbers, a privacy notice and cookie handling done properly, honest service pages that read like reassurance rather than sales, and WhatsApp click-to-chat as standard.

If you want to see how the same principles apply to other regulated and professional practices, our guides library covers the wider picture. But the headline for podiatry is simple: say only what is true, show your registration, protect patient data, and the compliance takes care of itself while the trust does the selling.

This article is general guidance, not legal advice. For your own obligations, check the current HCPC standards, the CAP Code and ICO guidance, or take professional advice.