Editorial Policy

The Editorial Standards Behind Every UK Medical Centre Entry

This page sets out the editorial framework we work to: who writes our content, how we source it across NHS England, NHS Wales, NHS Scotland, and HSC Northern Ireland, how we verify it, how we handle corrections, what advertising relationships we accept and decline, and how we handle AI assistance. Read it alongside our Sources & Methodology.

Effective date: 1 January 2026

Last reviewed: April 2026

Standard: Manual verification, quarterly cycle

What is on this page

1. Editorial Mission

UK general practice is local and varied. There are around 6,500 NHS GP practices in England and several hundred more across Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, plus walk-in centres, Urgent Treatment Centres, NHS dental practices, sexual health clinics, vaccination centres, and CQC-registered private clinics. Each has its own opening hours, telephone, registration arrangement, online services, list size, partner team, and CQC (or HIW / HIS / RQIA) rating. We exist to give UK patients, carers, family members, and clinicians referring across services plain-English access to each practice’s administrative details — without auto-scraped staleness, without misleading branding suggesting NHS affiliation, and without any confusion between directory information and clinical advice.

2. Source Hierarchy

We work to a six-tier source hierarchy, where higher-tier sources govern when sources conflict:

Tier 1 — Primary authority: The practice’s own NHS profile (on NHS.uk for England, NHS 111 Wales / NHS Wales for Wales, NHS Inform / Scotland’s Service Directory for Scotland, nidirect / HSC for Northern Ireland), plus the practice’s own published website where it has one.
Tier 2: The relevant inspector — CQC for England, HIW for Wales, HIS for Scotland, RQIA for Northern Ireland — for the current published rating and inspection-report details.
Tier 3: The relevant commissioner — NHS England and the Integrated Care Board (ICB) for English practices, the local health board for Wales and Scotland, the HSC Trust for Northern Ireland.
Tier 4: Professional regulators — GMC, NMC, GPhC, GDC, HCPC — for individual-clinician registration status where it is appropriate to confirm.
Tier 5: NICE clinical guidelines and MHRA guidance for context on services described — never as a substitute for clinical advice.
Tier 6: Established UK healthcare publications, NHS Confederation, BMA / RCGP / RCN guidance — background context only.

Full detail on each tier is on our Sources & Methodology page.

3. Verification Workflow

Identify the right authoritative source. NHS practice profile, practice website, CQC / HIW / HIS / RQIA published page.
Verify URLs are live. A human editor clicks every link before publication.
Cross-check the practice address and postcode against Royal Mail PAF data and the practice’s NHS profile.
Cross-check the CQC rating (England) or HIW / HIS / RQIA equivalent against the regulator’s current published page.
Verify the ICB attribution against NHS England’s published ICB-practice mapping (England) or equivalent for devolved nations.
Verify NHS App availability and online services against the practice’s NHS profile.
Dial-test the practice main telephone. Quarterly cycle.
Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews end-to-end, including a fresh check on the “this is not medical advice” notice and the 999 / 111 emergency framework.

4. Independence

medicalcentreuk.org/ is independent. We are not affiliated with the NHS, NHS England, NHS Wales, NHS Scotland, HSC Northern Ireland, the CQC, HIW, HIS, RQIA, the GMC, NMC, GPhC, GDC, HCPC, MHRA, NICE, the Department of Health and Social Care, any ICB or local health board, any GP practice, or any commercial healthcare platform. No NHS body, regulator, or third party reviews our content prior to publication. No payment is accepted for editorial coverage of any specific practice or any specific service.

5. Advertising Relationships

We are funded by display advertising. Our editorial content is never altered to favour any advertiser. We decline advertising in these categories:

Operations marketed as a substitute for NHS GP services, NHS 111, or 999 — including unregulated “online doctor” or “telehealth” operations not registered with the CQC (or HIW, HIS, RQIA for the devolved nations)
Operations that misrepresent themselves as the NHS, an NHS practice, the CQC, the GMC, or any other UK statutory body
Unregulated alternative or “miracle cure” products targeting serious medical conditions
Prescription-only medicines (POM) advertised direct to consumers in breach of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012
Cosmetic procedures not delivered through a CQC-registered (or equivalent) provider
Unverified private clinics without a current CQC (or HIW / HIS / RQIA) registration
Gambling, payday lending, adult content, or other categories incompatible with our health-information context

6. Not Clinical Content

We publish administrative directory content, not clinical guidance

We describe what services a practice offers, where it is, and how to contact it. We do not publish symptom checkers, diagnostic tools, treatment recommendations, medication advice, or anything that could be relied upon for a clinical decision. For clinical questions, the routes are: your registered GP practice, NHS 111, the NHS App, the NHS.uk symptom information pages, and in an emergency 999. Our content is not a replacement for any of these.

7. Corrections

If a directory entry is wrong — address change, partner change, branch closure, CQC rating change, telephone change, NHS App availability change — we want to know and we want to fix it. Reader-reported corrections are our priority queue. We process corrections within 7 working days, with a 48-hour expedited path for broken practice URLs and clearly out-of-date CQC ratings. We add a small editorial note when a substantive correction is made.

8. The NHS Change Cycle

UK NHS structure changes more often than people realise. The 2022 reorganisation in England replaced Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) with Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and added the Integrated Care Systems (ICS) layer. Primary Care Networks (PCNs) reorganise periodically. Practice mergers and branch closures happen at a steady drip; CQC re-inspections are continuous; NHS App functionality has expanded substantially since launch. We review our framework content after every significant NHS structural change and update before the change takes effect where the timing is published in advance.

9. Authors and Contributors

Site content is written and reviewed by editors who have spent time researching and writing about UK general practice. Specialist subject-matter reviewers — including practising GPs, practice managers, and NHS information governance professionals — are consulted on substantive editorial questions, particularly after NHS structural changes or major CQC framework revisions. We do not publish ghost-written content from third parties without editorial review.

10. AI and Automation

We use software tools for spell-check (British English), grammar review, and routine drafting assistance. However, no editorial fact, URL, telephone number, CQC rating, ICB attribution, address, or service description on medicalcentreuk.org/ is published from AI without human verification against the practice's own published page. Every practice entry passes through human editorial review. We do not auto-generate or auto-publish practice entries. We do not use AI to write clinical content of any kind on this site, because we do not publish clinical content of any kind on this site.

11. Contact

For corrections, editorial questions, or sourcing enquiries: info@medicalcentreuk.org

Spotted a Correction?

Email us with subject line “Correction” — corrections are our priority queue, 7 working days, 48-hour expedited path for broken practice URLs and out-of-date CQC ratings.

📧 info@medicalcentreuk.org