Beauty industry feels ‘forgotten’ as lockdown lifts

A TWYFORD beauty therapist said she feels heartbroken that her industry can’t reopen under current Government restrictions.

Penny Adams, who works as a beauty therapist at Twyford hairdressers, The Strand, is surrounded by colleagues who have all started working again.

Instead, Ms Adams sits at the reception desk, waiting to hear when she can restart beauty treatments.

She told Wokingham.Today: “It’s absolutely soul destroying not knowing when we can return. Beauty is all I know. We feel like the forgotten industry.

“Each year, the beauty industry contributes £28.5 billion to the national economy. But the Government has put us in the same category as strip clubs.

Ms Adams said she was glad to see Caroline Nokes, a Hampshire MP standing up for women-focussed industries, as restrictions on businesses are lifted.

Speaking in Parliament on Monday, Ms Nokes put pressure on Matt Hancock to confirm a reopening date for the beauty industry.

Ms Nokes said: “People working in aesthetics, professionals who tattoo on eyebrows to alopecia sufferers or tattoo on the nipples of cancer patients who have had reconstructive surgery, have been horrified to discover they are categorised alongside strip clubs.

“Will my right honourable friend please look at this issue urgently to understand how the NHS is referring patients to these people who are still not allowed to open.”

In response, an amendment was passed to allow medical aestheticians who tattoo nipples for breast reconstructions can now return to work.

But no answers have been given for the wider industry.

Ms Adams added: “I’ve been a beauty therapist for 22 years and hygiene is the first thing we think of. My hygiene standards are amazing.

“When the question was asked about salons reopening in Parliament, we were just laughed at. It’s like we’re at the bottom of the barrel, I just feel devastated.”