Crackdown on ‘Wild West’ of beauty salons and Botox bars

A BOTOX crackdown is poised to shut a fifth of “Wild West” beauty salons.

Ministers are planning to launch a new tough licensing scheme for all those offering aesthetic treatments such as Botox, lip fillers, chemical peels and laser hair removal in England.

It comes after a 400 per cent rise in complaints about the procedures going wrong last year alone, with the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP) now receiving up to 200 a month and the government-approved register, Save Face, receiving 3,000 last year.

The body warned that “the recent explosion in cosmetic procedures has been fuelled by social media” as well as the Covid lockdowns.

Non-surgical cosmetic procedures are entirely unregulated, meaning anyone can offer them, which the JCCP said is leaving some people with major scarring of the tissue and facial disfigurement that requires urgent care.

Now, the Government has launched its first consultation on the £3.6 billion industry which will last eight weeks and inform a new set of rules, such as a requirement to be licensed to perform specific procedures. Prof David Sines CBE, chairman of the JCCP, told The

Daily Telegraph: “The term ‘Wild West’ is used in the industry. The issue is you’ve got so many quite unscrupulous practitioners who are assessing members of the public over the telephone or online – that is completely inappropriate, you need to have a face-to-face assessment of a person’s physical and emotional needs.

“But also they are providing ‘before and after’ images of what you could look like – again that’s very inappropriate – and ‘remote prescribing’ which is incredibly unsafe.

“I think this [crackdown] could affect up to 20 per cent of current non-healthcare beauty practitioners – you’ve got beauty therapists and beauticians, but the doctors and the dentists will already have a lot of the skills required – it could go certainly into several hundred [no longer able to operate].”

Maria Caulfield, the health minister, said: “There’s no doubt that the popularity of cosmetic procedures is increasing, so it’s our role to ensure consistent standards for consumers and a level playing field for businesses and practitioners.”

‘You need to have a face-to-face assessment of a person’s physical and emotional needs’