How to choose an aesthetics clinic in London

London has more aesthetic clinics than any other city in the UK, and far less regulation sitting behind them than most people assume. You cannot tell a good one from the interior, the reviews or the Instagram account. You can tell from a handful of specific checks, most of which are free and take minutes.

What is actually regulated, and what is not

The Care Quality Commission registers providers for surgical cosmetic procedures: facelifts, eyelid surgery, liposuction, body contouring, and thread lifting when a healthcare professional performs it. The CQC states plainly that it does not regulate injectable treatments, dermal fillers, chemical peels, or laser and light treatments. So a clinic offering only non-surgical treatments is not CQC registered. That is not a failing, it simply means CQC registration is not the check available to you here.

England is in the middle of changing this. The Department of Health and Social Care published its response to the licensing consultation in August 2025, setting out a three tier model: lower risk procedures open to any practitioner meeting agreed standards, medium risk procedures requiring a licence plus oversight from a named regulated healthcare professional, and high risk procedures restricted to regulated healthcare professionals working in CQC registered settings. A further consultation on the high risk restrictions was planned for early 2026. None of it is in force yet. Until it is, the checking is yours to do.

Check the person, not just the clinic

A clinic is a room. The question that matters is who is holding the needle, and what they are accountable to.

Doctors, nurses, dentists and pharmacists in the UK appear on public registers kept by the General Medical Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the General Dental Council and the General Pharmaceutical Council. Those registers are free and searchable. The mechanism matters more than the badge: a register entry means a body exists that can investigate a complaint about that named person and remove their right to practise. A training certificate records that somebody attended a course. Those are not the same kind of document.

Beyond statutory registration, the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners keeps a voluntary register of cosmetic practitioners, accredited by the Professional Standards Authority. The JCCP advises the public to search that register, ask the practitioner for their membership certificate, and check the supervision matrix published alongside its code of practice, which sets out which treatments a given practitioner can carry out and at what level of supervision. Somebody genuinely on the register will not mind being asked.

Ask who prescribes, and whether they will see you

This is the most useful question in UK aesthetics, and almost nobody asks it.

Injectable treatments for expression lines, discussed at a consultation for lines and wrinkles, use prescription-only medicines. A prescription has to be written by a qualified prescriber for a named individual, and that prescriber has to assess the person first. In August 2024 the Nursing and Midwifery Council said it was clear that remote prescribing is unlikely to be suitable for injectable cosmetics, and that it wanted to align with other healthcare regulators which require a face to face consultation before prescribing non-surgical cosmetic medicines. General Medical Council prescribing guidance sets the same expectation of adequate assessment.

So ask: who writes the prescription for my treatment, and will that person assess me in person before it is written? If the answer is an online form, or a video call with somebody you will never meet, you have learned something useful about how that clinic operates.

The questions worth asking at a consultation

Which register are you on, and what is your registration number? You should be able to verify the answer yourself, before you book.

Who prescribes, and will they assess me in person? Worth asking twice if the first answer is vague.

What are you injecting, and what is the plan if I react badly to it? For hyaluronic acid dermal fillers, ask whether the clinic holds the dissolving agent used to reverse them on site, who prescribes it, and who is trained to use it in an emergency. Vascular occlusion, where filler blocks a blood vessel, is uncommon but time critical. The answer should arrive immediately, not be looked up while you wait.

What is the full cost, in writing, before I commit? The CQC's own advice to patients is that costs should be set out in writing in advance. That covers the treatment, the review appointment, and anything needed to correct a result.

What indemnity insurance do you hold for this specific procedure? Cover is procedure specific, and a general beauty policy may not extend to injectables at all.

Who do I contact out of hours, and how quickly will somebody respond? Complications do not keep office hours.

How many of these have you done, and what goes wrong most often? An experienced practitioner has a ready, specific answer about their own complications. Anyone who says nothing ever goes wrong is either very new or not paying attention.

What should make you walk out

Pressure. A discount that only holds today, or treatment offered on the spot before anybody has asked what medicines you take. Medical history and current medication should come before any injectable, every time, and that is how we work.

Advertising that names a prescription-only medicine to the public. UK advertising rules do not permit it. A clinic doing it anyway is telling you how closely it reads the rules it is expected to follow.

Anyone willing to treat a person under 18 for cosmetic reasons. Since 2021 it has been a criminal offence in England to give cosmetic fillers, or a prescription treatment for expression lines, to a person under 18 for cosmetic purposes, and parental consent does not change that.

Any promise of a guaranteed, permanent or risk free result. Nothing in this field is any of those things, and a practitioner who says otherwise is either overselling or does not know.

Where the evidence runs out

It would be useful to tell you that practitioners on a register have measurably fewer complications. There is no published UK evidence showing that, because complication data is not collected across the sector in a way that would allow the comparison. The registers are not a ranking, and they do not predict good hands or good judgement. What they give you is accountability: a named regulator, a complaints route, and a record. While the licensing framework is still being written, that is the strongest signal available.

How we answer these questions

We are clinician led. Our clinical team will give you their registration details if you ask, before you book. We take a full medical history and medication list before any injectable. We photograph at every appointment, so that change is judged against a record rather than a memory. We will tell you when a treatment will not do what you want, including when the honest recommendation is to do nothing. And when what you need is surgical, we will say so and refer you.

Book a free 30 minute consultation and bring these questions with you. There is no obligation to have anything done, and no charge if you decide against it. Book online here.

Nova Beauty Clinic, East Finchley, London.