The words used on this site, defined plainly. Most of them describe who is accountable for a cosmetic injection rather than what is in the syringe, because that is the part a street address tells you nothing about.
Also known as: Harley St.
A street in Marylebone, London W1, which has been the centre of British private medicine since 1860. In everyday use the name means far more than the street itself, and clinics on the surrounding roads routinely describe themselves as being on Harley Street. It is a postal address and a reputation. It is not a qualification, a licence or a register.
Also known as: Harley Street Medical Area.
The name the freeholder gives to the medical quarter around Harley Street, covering roughly 95 acres of Marylebone. Its own published figures put more than 300 healthcare providers and 2,283 consultants inside it. Membership of the district is a matter of where a business rents, and it carries no clinical standard of its own.
Source: www.hdwe.co.uk
The freeholder that owns a large proportion of the property in the Harley Street district and markets it to healthcare businesses. It is a landlord rather than a regulator. It decides who may rent a building on the street, and it has no role in deciding who is competent to treat you inside one.
Source: www.hdwe.co.uk
A room in which a practitioner sees patients, which is very often rented rather than owned outright. Within this district the freeholder itself advertises consulting rooms as available lettable space. A practitioner holding a Harley Street consulting room may consequently see patients there for a single afternoon each week and practise somewhere else entirely for the remainder of it.
Also known as: Room hire, Sessional rental.
The arrangement under which a practitioner books a consulting room by the half day or the session rather than holding a lease on it. It is ordinary and entirely legitimate. It matters to a patient for one reason: it decides whether there is anybody at that address on the day you need to be seen about a problem.
Also known as: CQC.
The independent regulator of health and social care in England. It registers and inspects providers carrying out what the legislation defines as a regulated activity, and it publishes its inspection reports for anyone to consult. It registers organisations and premises rather than streets, and a considerable proportion of non-surgical cosmetic practice sits outside its statutory remit altogether.
Source: www.cqc.org.uk
The statutory category determining whether a provider must register with the Care Quality Commission. Surgery falls within it. Most non-surgical cosmetic injecting does not, which is precisely why a clinic offering injectable treatments may hold no registration whatsoever and nonetheless be operating entirely lawfully. Establish the position by asking, rather than assuming it in either direction.
Source: www.cqc.org.uk
Also known as: GMC.
The body that holds the register of doctors licensed to practise in the United Kingdom. Its register is public and searchable by name, and it records any restriction on a doctor. A doctor who cannot be found on it is not a doctor. Search for the General Medical Council directly rather than trusting a link on a clinic page.
Also known as: NMC.
The regulator of nurses and midwives in the United Kingdom, holding a public register that anyone can search. A large share of cosmetic injecting in this country is done by registered nurses, and many of them are more experienced with a needle than the average doctor. The register is the thing to check, rather than the job title on the website.
Source: www.nmc.org.uk
Also known as: GDC.
The regulator of dentists and dental care professionals. Dentists appear frequently in aesthetic practice, and their training in facial anatomy and in injecting is directly relevant. As with the other registers, the useful step is to look the individual up on it rather than to accept a credential printed on a clinic page.
Source: www.gdc-uk.org
Also known as: GPhC.
The regulator of pharmacists in Great Britain. Pharmacist independent prescribers may prescribe and administer certain cosmetic treatments, so the GPhC register is the fourth of the four that are worth knowing about. Search for the General Pharmaceutical Council by name to reach its register.
A registered professional who has completed further training that allows them to prescribe medicines in their own right. It matters in aesthetics because some treatments may only be given on a prescription written after a face-to-face assessment. Polynucleotides are regulated as a device rather than a medicine, so this particular treatment does not require one.
Also known as: POM.
A legal category of medicine that may only be supplied against a prescription written by an authorised prescriber. Products in this category may not be advertised to the public in the United Kingdom, which is why a compliant clinic page will describe a treatment by what it does rather than by a brand name. No such product is named anywhere on this site.
Source: www.gov.uk
A product regulated for safety and performance rather than as a medicine, overseen in the United Kingdom by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. Polynucleotide injectables fall into this class. A device may be advertised to the public, so the decision on this site to name no brand at all is an editorial choice rather than a legal requirement.
Source: www.gov.uk
Also known as: JCCP.
A voluntary register for practitioners and training providers in non-surgical cosmetic treatment, set up to raise standards in a field that statute has not yet reached. Membership is not compulsory and its absence proves nothing on its own. Its presence tells you the practitioner chose to be held to a published standard.
Source: www.jccp.org.uk
The public search on the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners website that lets you look up whether a named practitioner appears on its register. It takes under a minute and it is one of the few checks on a cosmetic practitioner that a patient can complete without contacting anybody.
Source: www.jccp.org.uk
A voluntary register that the Professional Standards Authority has independently assessed and accredited against published criteria. Accreditation constitutes oversight of the register itself rather than individual inspection of every practitioner appearing on it. It remains a meaningful signal within cosmetic practice precisely because so substantial a proportion of the field operates with no statutory regulator behind it.
Source: www.professionalstandards.org.uk
A register of non-surgical cosmetic practitioners and clinics that is accredited by the Professional Standards Authority. Practitioners on it are assessed in person and their premises are visited. Searching it by area is a practical way to find a clinic that has already agreed to be inspected by somebody.
Source: www.saveface.co.uk
Section 180 of the Health and Care Act 2022 gives the Secretary of State power to require a licence for both the practitioner and the premises for specified cosmetic procedures in England. The power came into force on 1 July 2022. The regulations that would create the licences themselves have not yet been made.
Source: www.legislation.gov.uk
Also known as: Polynucleotides.
A purified chain of DNA fragments, derived from fish, injected into the skin over a short course of appointments to improve its texture and hydration. It adds no volume. On this site the relevant point is that the substance is the same wherever it is injected, so the variable a patient is actually choosing is the practitioner.
Source: www.nhs.uk
The insurance cover a practitioner maintains against a claim arising from their clinical work. Any registered professional injecting patients should hold appropriate cover, and any practitioner should be willing to confirm that they do when asked directly. A refusal to answer that question is itself the answer.
The documented arrangement a clinic maintains governing what happens when something goes wrong outside a scheduled appointment. It should identify who you contact, the interval within which they respond, and the address at which you would be examined. On a street where many practitioners rent sessionally, this is the single question most worth asking before a first appointment.