Four organisations hold the registers that matter most in this field. They differ in what they cover, what their registers display and how their guidance treats cosmetic practice. This is a working guide to each.
The General Medical Council
The GMC registers doctors practising in the UK and maintains the medical register, which is searchable free by name or registration number. An entry shows the registration status, whether the doctor holds a licence to practise, the primary medical qualification and year, and any published restrictions such as conditions, undertakings, warnings or suspension. The GMC also maintains the specialist register and the GP register.
The GMC publishes specific guidance for doctors who offer cosmetic interventions. It is one of the most directly useful documents a patient can read, because it sets out the standard the doctor is meant to be meeting: consent taken by the doctor performing the procedure, consideration of psychological vulnerability, no targeting of vulnerable groups, no inducements or time limited offers, and clear responsibility for aftercare.
The General Dental Council
The GDC registers dentists and dental care professionals, including dental nurses, hygienists, therapists, technicians and orthodontic therapists. Its register is searchable free.
Dentists are common in facial aesthetics, and their training in facial anatomy is directly relevant. The GDC's standards require registrants to work within their knowledge, skills and competence and to have appropriate training. A dentist offering injectables should be able to describe their specific training in those treatments, and the fact of GDC registration alone does not establish it.
An important limit: the GDC regulates dental professionals in respect of their conduct generally, including work outside dentistry, but its register does not record training in facial aesthetics as a qualification.
What the regulators give you
- Free public access to the registration status of every doctor, dentist, nurse, midwife and pharmacist in the UK.
- Publication of restrictions on a registration, so that the public can see them.
- A complaints route about fitness to practise, open to anyone, without cost.
- Professional standards that require consent, competence, record keeping and candour.
- Guidance you can read in advance, setting out the standard the professional is meant to meet.
Regulators address fitness to practise. They do not award compensation or order refunds.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council
The NMC registers nurses, midwives and nursing associates. Its register is searchable free and shows registration status, the parts of the register the person is on, renewal information, prescriber annotations and any published restrictions.
The prescriber annotation is particularly useful here. If a nurse holds an independent prescriber qualification, it is recorded, which lets you check a claim to be a prescribing nurse in the same search.
The NMC Code requires registrants to work within the limits of their competence, to obtain consent properly, to keep clear records and to be open when things go wrong. All four apply directly to aesthetic practice.
The General Pharmaceutical Council
The GPhC registers pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and registered pharmacies in Great Britain. Pharmacy in Northern Ireland is regulated by the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland. The GPhC register shows registration status and independent prescriber annotation.
Pharmacist prescribers appear in this sector both as prescribers for other injectors and as practitioners. The GPhC has published expectations for prescribing services provided at a distance, which are directly relevant to the remote prescribing practices described in our guide to remote prescribing.
A practitioner who says they are regulated without naming the regulator. There are only four relevant statutory registers and all are free to search. A regulator that cannot be named is not one.
What a register entry does and does not show
It shows that the person exists, is qualified in their profession, is currently permitted to practise, and is subject to a code of conduct with a complaints route. It shows published restrictions.
It does not show training in a specific cosmetic procedure, complication rates, patient satisfaction, complaints that did not result in published action, or the quality of the clinic they work in. It is a floor, and the questions in our question set are how you check what sits above the floor.
Complaining to a regulator
Each of the four takes complaints from members of the public about the professionals it registers. Regulators deal with fitness to practise: whether the professional is safe and suitable to remain on the register. They do not award compensation, they do not resolve billing disputes, and they will not usually order a refund. If you want money back, that is a consumer or negligence route.
What a regulator can do is act on prescribing failures, consent failures, misleading conduct, poor record keeping and clinical practice falling below standard. Those are exactly the failures that characterise poor cosmetic practice, which makes regulator complaints more relevant here than people expect. The routes are set out in how to complain.
The regulator that does not exist
There is no statutory regulator of cosmetic practitioners as such. If the person treating you is not a doctor, dentist, nurse, midwife or pharmacist, none of these four has jurisdiction over them, and there is no fifth body that does. That is the structural gap this publication returns to constantly, and it is why the register check is the first thing we ask readers to do.