Verify the individual rather than the brand. Check their clinical registration on the regulator's own register, establish who prescribes and whether they assess you in person, confirm hyaluronidase is held on the premises, ask for the written complications protocol, and read the consent process before you agree to anything.
London has the densest concentration of aesthetic practitioners in the United Kingdom and an extraordinarily wide range of standards among them. That is possible because the legal framework is narrower than most people assume.
Botulinum toxin is a prescription-only medicine. It must be prescribed for a named individual by a qualified prescriber, and the regulators are clear that prescribing for cosmetic injection without a face-to-face assessment is unacceptable. That is a real constraint with real teeth.
Dermal fillers are not medicines. They are regulated as medical devices, which means there is no prescription requirement and, at present, no general licence required to inject them. In law, a person with no clinical training can buy filler and inject your face. Legislation enabling a licensing scheme for non-surgical cosmetic procedures in England exists under the Health and Care Act 2022 but has not been brought into force. Check the current position before relying on it either way.
The product is regulated. In most cases the person holding it is not.
The Care Quality Commission registers providers of regulated activities in England. A great many people assume that means every clinic offering injectables must be registered with it. That is not the case.
Most purely cosmetic injectable treatment does not fall within a regulated activity, so a perfectly competent clinic may have no reason to be registered. Conversely, a clinic that does provide a regulated activity, such as certain treatments of disease, disorder or injury, is required to register and can be inspected.
So the presence of registration is meaningful in a specific way, and its absence is not automatically a red flag. What matters is understanding which category the clinic sits in and why. Ask, and then check on the regulator's own website rather than looking at a logo.
Separately from clinical regulation, most London boroughs licence premises that offer certain treatments, under local special treatment provisions. This addresses the premises, the hygiene standards and the equipment rather than the clinical judgement of the person working there. It is worth asking whether the premises holds the licence its borough requires, and it is not a substitute for checking the individual.
Ask for the practitioner's full name, their professional registration and their registration number, and then check it on the regulator's own public register: the General Medical Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the General Dental Council or the General Pharmaceutical Council as appropriate. This takes two minutes. A practitioner who supplies the number without hesitation has told you something useful before you have even checked it.
For any prescription-only medicine, there must be a prescriber who has assessed you in person. Ask who that is and whether you will meet them. There is no satisfactory answer involving a form, a questionnaire or somebody in another city.
For hyaluronic acid filler: is hyaluronidase on these premises today, who prescribed it, and who would administer it? It is a prescription-only medicine, so a non-prescriber cannot lawfully hold it. If a vessel is compromised, the treatment window is hours.
Ask to see it in writing, and ask for the out-of-hours contact. You are listening for specifics and for evidence that this was thought about in advance rather than composed on the spot.
Policies exclude specific treatments. Ask what cover is held and whether it covers what is being proposed for you.
Good practice separates consultation from treatment, provides written information, allows a cooling-off period, and does not treat a new patient on the same day for anything significant. Consent signed in a corridor is not consent in any meaningful sense.
Ask what they refuse to do. A practitioner with a considered list of refusals has read enough about complications to have developed caution. A practitioner who says they can achieve anything you want is describing a shop.
You are allowed to leave. You are allowed to take the consent form home. You are allowed to say you want to think about it, and the reaction to that sentence is one of the most informative things you will observe all day.
Deposits are normal and reasonable. Pressure is not. If the conversation keeps returning to a package rather than to your face, if a price drops when you hesitate, or if you find yourself being reassured rather than informed, those are facts about the clinic rather than facts about you.
There are many careful, well-trained practitioners in London, and the purpose of this guide is not to make you distrust all of them. It is to give you the checks that let you tell them apart, because at present the framework will not do it for you.
Keep a written record of dates, products, doses and what you were told. Gathering it at the time is straightforward. Gathering it six months later frequently is not.
Only if it provides a regulated activity. Most purely cosmetic injectable treatment does not fall within one, so many competent clinics are not registered. Check which category applies rather than assuming.
In the UK at present, largely yes. Fillers are regulated as medical devices and there is no general licensing requirement to inject them.
A doctor, dentist, independent nurse prescriber or pharmacist independent prescriber, after a face-to-face assessment. Remote prescribing for cosmetic injection is not considered acceptable by the regulators.
A premises licence issued by many London boroughs covering certain treatments. It sets standards for the premises and equipment rather than for clinical judgement.
Only when you verify them on the accrediting body's own register. Logos are images. Registers accredited by the Professional Standards Authority can be searched directly.
For a first treatment, a gap between consultation and treatment is better practice and gives you time to decide without anyone waiting.
Before treatment
A full medical history, a discussion of what actually bothers you, an examination of your face at rest and in ...
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Cost and value
Because advertising a prescription-only medicine to the public is prohibited under UK medicines law, and becau...
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After treatment
Keep the area clean and undisturbed, stay upright for a few hours, avoid heat and strenuous exercise for aroun...
ReadThis website sells nothing and books nothing. It exists so that you walk into a consultation already knowing which questions separate a careful practitioner from a confident one, and already knowing when the correct answer is to leave without treatment.
hello@aestheticlaunchlab.comEnquiries are read and answered by Aesthetic Launch Lab, the UK aesthetics digital specialist that operates this website. Please do not send clinical details or photographs. If something has gone wrong after a procedure, contact the practitioner who treated you, or NHS 111, rather than waiting for a reply here.