HCPC and CSP compliance for clinic marketing

Your marketing is regulated in ways your marketing agency is unlikely to have read about. This is a written review of what you are publishing, against the standards that actually apply to you as a registrant.

What gets flagged most often

Across the audits I have run, the same handful of issues account for most findings. None of them are exotic. They are the ordinary consequence of marketing copy being written by somebody who is not a registrant.

Superlative claims are the most common. A headline calling a practice the best in its city falls under ASA CAP Rule 3.1 on misleading advertising, and CSP guidance is explicit about superlatives that cannot be objectively evidenced. The fix is rarely painful, because specific and demonstrable positioning tends to read better than a generic boast anyway.

  • Superlatives and comparative claims with no evidence base behind them
  • HCPC registration not displayed anywhere, while the protected title is used throughout
  • Testimonials presented without the variance wording that makes them defensible
  • Outcome language in service copy that reads as a clinical promise
  • Privacy policy missing or out of date, and cookie consent that does not actually gate anything

The protected title, and why registration display matters

Physiotherapist is a protected title under the Physiotherapists Order 2001. Using it without registration is a criminal offence, which means the title carries an expectation of verifiability that most job descriptions do not.

CSP guidance recommends registration numbers be available to patients on request, and proactive display on the website is increasingly treated as best practice. A clinic that markets under the title without evidencing registration anywhere has left an obvious question unanswered on its own front page. Answering it is a short job and it also happens to be a trust signal that helps you commercially.

Four sets of rules, one piece of copy
ASA CAP Code
Superlatives and comparisons need evidence you can produce
HCPC standards
You are accountable as a registrant, not as an advertiser
CSP guidance
How the profession and your registration are presented
DMCC Act 2024
How reviews are gathered, shown and never filtered

A marketing agency reads none of these. The failure is rarely a bad advert. It is copy that reads well and quietly makes a claim you cannot stand behind.

Reviews and testimonials have their own rules now

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came into force on 6 April 2025. It bans fake reviews, reviews whose incentives are concealed, and presenting reviews in a misleading way, which includes suppressing negative ones or cherry picking positive ones. The CMA can now act directly rather than through the courts.

This matters for clinics because a common tactic sold by review tools is to route happy patients to a public review and unhappy ones to a private form. That practice also contravenes Google's own policy on selectively soliciting positive reviews. If you are using a review request system, it is worth knowing which of the two it does.

What the audit covers, and what you get

The review looks at everything a patient or a regulator could see. Website copy, service and condition pages, your Google Business Profile, any live ads, and social media. Each finding is written up with where it is, which standard it engages, and what to change, ranked so you can work down the list rather than guess where to start.

  • Website, Google profile, ads and social reviewed against HCPC, CSP, ASA CAP and DMCC
  • A written report with each finding ranked by risk rather than presented as a flat list
  • Suggested replacement wording, not just a note that something is wrong
  • Carried out by a physiotherapist on the HCPC register, which is the part most agencies cannot offer

Common questions

Is this legal advice?

No. It is a professional review by a registered physiotherapist against published regulatory and advertising standards. Where something needs a solicitor, the report says so rather than guessing.

How much does a compliance audit cost?

The compliance review on its own starts at £350. It is also the compliance half of the £495 diagnostic, so if you are likely to want the visibility and cost per patient work as well, the diagnostic is better value. Both are on the pricing page.

What if the audit finds a lot of problems?

That is a normal outcome and it is the point of running one. Findings are ranked so you can deal with the regulatory items first and the trust and marketing items afterwards. Most clinics clear the high priority items in an afternoon of editing.

Can I see the standard before committing to anything?

Yes. The free compliance checklist covers 26 checks you can run over your own site before speaking to anybody, and it will give you a reasonable sense of where you stand.

Get the free compliance checklist 26 checks to run before your next post, ad or campaign goes live. No email required.