The single most useful thing you can do before a cosmetic procedure takes about four minutes and costs nothing. You look the practitioner up on the public register of the regulator whose title they are using. Four UK regulators publish free registers that anyone may search. The registers exist precisely so that members of the public can check who they are dealing with, and using them is not rude, unusual or awkward. It is what they are for.
What follows is the method, the limits of the method, and the situations in which the search returns nothing and you still need to make a decision.
Which register applies to which title
The title a practitioner uses tells you which register to search. This matters, because searching the wrong register will return nothing and you may wrongly conclude the person is unregistered.
- Doctor, including anyone using the title Dr on the basis of a medical qualification: the General Medical Council register.
- Dentist or dental nurse, dental hygienist, dental therapist: the General Dental Council register.
- Nurse, midwife or nursing associate: the Nursing and Midwifery Council register.
- Pharmacist or pharmacy technician: the General Pharmaceutical Council register, with a separate regulator covering Northern Ireland pharmacy.
Watch the title carefully. A person may hold a doctorate that is not a medical degree and still, entirely lawfully, call themselves Dr. That is not fraud, but it is not the same thing as being a registered medical practitioner, and the register will tell you which it is.
How to run the search properly
Search by surname and first name as they appear on official documents, not as they appear on social media. Practitioners frequently trade under a shortened name, a married name, a maiden name or a brand name. If the search returns nothing, ask for the name under which they are registered and their registration number. A registered professional will have that number to hand, because they need it constantly.
Once you find the entry, read all of it, not just the fact that it exists. Registers carry more than a name. Depending on the regulator you may see the registration number, the date of first registration, the qualification and the year it was awarded, the registered status, and any conditions, undertakings, warnings or suspensions currently attached to that registration. A live restriction is published because the public is meant to see it.
What a register entry actually proves
Registration proves that a person holds a recognised qualification, is subject to a regulator's standards, can be complained about to that regulator, and is currently permitted to practise in their profession. That is a great deal more than nothing. It gives you a named accountability route that does not depend on the clinic's goodwill.
It does not prove that the person is trained, experienced or competent in the specific cosmetic procedure they are proposing to perform on you. Regulators register professionals, not procedures. A doctor's entry on the GMC register does not certify their skill with a cannula in the mid face, and a nurse's NMC entry does not certify their management of a vascular occlusion. Those are questions you have to ask separately, which is why every article on this site pairs the register check with a set of procedure specific questions.
What you are entitled to at this stage
- To be told the full name and professional registration of the person who will carry out the procedure, before you commit to anything.
- To be told the name of the person who will prescribe any prescription only medicine involved, if that is a different person.
- To ask these questions without being charged, hurried or made to feel difficult.
- To leave without treatment, and without paying for a treatment you have not had.
None of these are favours. They are the ordinary conditions of consenting to something being done to your body.
Specialist lists, and why they are not a quality mark for cosmetic work
The GMC also maintains a specialist register and a GP register. Inclusion means a doctor has completed approved higher training in a recognised specialty. Plastic surgery and dermatology are recognised specialties. Cosmetic medicine, as a non surgical field, is not a specialty in that sense, so the absence of an entry there tells you less than people assume, and the presence of one in an unrelated specialty tells you almost nothing about injectables.
The useful question is narrower. Ask which recognised specialty, if any, the person completed training in, and then ask separately what training they hold in the exact procedure being proposed.
A practitioner who reacts badly to being asked for a registration number has told you something important. Every registered professional in the UK is asked for theirs routinely. The reaction, not the number, is the information.
When the search returns nothing
There are three explanations and you need to know which one applies.
You searched the wrong name or the wrong register. Common and easily fixed. Ask directly.
The person is not registered and does not claim to be. In most of the United Kingdom, a person with no healthcare registration at all may currently perform many non surgical cosmetic procedures, including injecting dermal filler, without breaking the law. This surprises almost everyone who hears it for the first time. It is the central fact about the sector. There is a licensing power on the statute book for England in the Health and Care Act 2022, but at the time of writing the scheme it would create has not been brought into force, so the protection people assume exists does not yet exist. Read our explanation of the licensing scheme and its current status before assuming otherwise.
The person claims a registered title and is not on the register. This is the serious case. Using a protected title without registration is a criminal matter for the relevant regulator, and each of the four regulators has a route for reporting it. Do not proceed, and report it.
Voluntary registers are a different thing
You may be pointed towards the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners or Save Face. These are voluntary registers, and membership carries meaning: it usually involves checks on qualifications, insurance and premises that nobody is otherwise obliged to make. But a voluntary register is not a statutory regulator. It cannot strike anyone off the practice of cosmetic procedures, because there is nothing statutory to be struck off. We set out what each one does and does not prove in our guide to voluntary registers.
Check the premises as well as the person
A practitioner is one half of the picture. The other is where the procedure happens and who is accountable for that place. In England, some cosmetic services must be registered with the Care Quality Commission and appear on its public directory, while a great many non surgical treatments fall outside registration entirely. Scotland regulates independent clinics through Healthcare Improvement Scotland on a different basis. We cover the distinction in our guide to clinic registration.
Write down what you found
Record the full registered name, the registration number, the register you found it on and the date you looked. Take a screenshot. If something goes wrong later, that record is the difference between a complaint that can be progressed and one that cannot, because you will know exactly who treated you rather than a first name and a brand.
This is not paranoia. It is the same file you would keep for any significant purchase, and unlike most purchases, the thing being sold is an intervention into your body that may be difficult or impossible to undo.