Guide

CQC registration for independent practitioners

When the exemption applies, when it does not, and why one treatment on the list changes the answer for a whole group.

The short answer: most consultants seeing private patients in a consulting room do not need their own CQC registration, because the regulations exempt an independent medical practitioner who meets a set of conditions. The exemption is lost the moment the practitioner provides certain treatments, and if one member of a group loses it, the whole group must register.

Who is the exemption for?

The CQC regulates providers of regulated activities in England, and treatment of disease, disorder or injury is one of those activities. Almost everything a consultant does in private practice falls within that definition. The regulations then carve out an exemption for a medical practitioner who works from a consulting room, has a connection to a designated body, and does not provide any of the treatments the CQC lists as taking a practitioner outside the exemption. All of the conditions have to be met at once.

What counts as a consulting room?

The principle is that a consulting room is a place for consultation, examination and minor treatment, rather than a facility for procedures that need clinical infrastructure. A rented room in a medical building, or a room in your own premises, is the setting the exemption has in mind. A consulting room where a listed treatment is provided is no longer within the exemption, whatever it is called on the door.

What is a designated body and why does it matter?

A designated body is the organisation responsible for a doctor’s revalidation, with a responsible officer who oversees appraisal. For most consultants that is the NHS trust that employs them. The exemption requires the independent practitioner to have that connection, because it is the mechanism through which fitness to practise is monitored where the CQC is not doing so. A doctor with no connection to a designated body cannot rely on the exemption and should expect to register.

Which treatments remove the exemption?

The CQC guidance lists treatments that take an independent practitioner outside the exemption regardless of setting. They include:

• Treatment under general anaesthesia
• Intravenous sedation
• Most cosmetic surgery
• Endoscopy
• Diagnostic imaging
• Administration of intravenous medication

If any of these forms part of what you provide in your own name, you need to be registered, or to provide it under the registration of a provider who is. The guidance is the place to check the full list, because the summary above is a principle rather than the text.

How do practising privileges at a private hospital fit in?

A consultant who operates at a CQC-registered private hospital under practising privileges is working within that hospital’s registration for the activity carried out there. The hospital is the registered provider and answers to the CQC for the service. This is why a surgeon can run an outpatient clinic from a consulting room under the exemption and operate at a registered hospital without holding a registration in their own name. The exemption covers the consulting room work and the hospital’s registration covers the surgery. What it does not cover is a listed treatment carried out somewhere that is not registered.

What is the group rule?

Where practitioners work together as a group, whether as a partnership or a company, the CQC looks at the group as a whole. If any one member provides a treatment that removes the exemption, the group is providing a regulated activity and must register, even though the other members would each have been exempt on their own. A practice that takes on a colleague, or a colleague who adds a treatment to their list, can change the position for everyone.

What does this mean for your website?

Two things. First, the website should describe the treatments you actually provide and the setting you provide them in, because that description is what a patient, an insurer and the regulator will read. Second, the site should state your registration status correctly. If you are registered, say so and link to the CQC listing. If you are exempt, do not imply a registration you do not hold. A procedure page for surgery you perform at a registered hospital should name the hospital, because that is where the registration sits.

What should you check today?

• Do you provide any treatment on the CQC list, anywhere, in your own name?
• Are you connected to a designated body?
• Does anyone in your group provide a listed treatment?
• Does your website describe your treatments, settings and registration status accurately?

This is general information rather than regulatory advice. Whether you need to register is a question for you and, if in doubt, for the CQC directly. Compliance rests with you as the regulated party.

Source: CQC, scope of registration guidance for independent medical practitioners working in private practice, read 11 September 2026.