Town centres are overrun by beauty joints selling Botox in old corner shops – is your local high street a hotspot?
A WOMAN in her forties leaves an aesthetics clinic with tiny pinpricks dotted across her forehead.
Minutes later a student in her mid-twenties walks into an almost identical clinic a few doors down.
On both shop windows there are photos of models with flawless complexions and perfectly plump lips, with text offering walk-in “facial aesthetics”.
Just half an hour later the student is back on the street, her face visibly pink from whatever treatment she signed up for inside.
This is the reality of Botox Britain.
In premises once occupied by chicken joints and corner shops, “tweakment” clinics are appearing along the otherwise dying High Streets all over the nation.
READ MORE ON BOTOX
There are thought to be more than 700 aesthetics clinics in the UK, with prices for Botox and fillers starting at more than £150.
In Balham, South London, there are six clinics within a 1.5-mile stretch of road.
Local shopkeeper Kareem says: “This isn’t unusual. You might hear about the High Street dying, with places like Wilko or Topshop going bust, but more beauty clinics are opening here all the time.
“You might get two or three very close to one another but it doesn’t seem to affect their businesses. They always look busy.
Most read in Fabulous
“You see all kinds of people, just ordinary women, mostly in their 20s or 30s, and they don’t necessarily appear rich. I once saw a mum take her children inside one of them.”
Emma Costello, who runs SE1 Medical Aesthetics, has seen several clinics open nearby since she began trading in April 2021.
She says: “We opened up during lockdown and we were the only ones on our street.
“Now there’s another one about to open and another recently opened further up the street.
“They’re cropping up everywhere, often in buildings that were previously independent places that had to shut down because they couldn’t afford to stay there.”
Subtle enhancements
The UK non-surgical aesthetics industry is now worth more than £3billion — up from £2.75billion in 2017, and expected to grow to £5.4billion by 2026.
And practitioners are scrambling to meet demand.
Emma says: “In two and a half years we’ve grown drastically.
“We started off with two doctors doing the procedures and now we have six or seven.
“Botox is the most popular, followed by cheek fillers.
“Our clientele is definitely the older demographic, 35-plus, and almost a 50/50 split, male and female.”
Between Balham and neighbouring Clapham is a huddle of beauty salons offering Botox and fillers, some even in private dental surgeries.
And there are many other tweakment hotspots across the country.
There are 17 aesthetic clinics in the square mile between Oxford Circus and Regent Street Station in central London.
Manchester’s trendy Northern Quarter has ten clinics within half a square mile — double the amount of coffee shops.
And in central Liverpool, there are 17 clinics within a half-mile radius of Rodney Street — more than five times the number of fast-food outlets.
In Newcastle upon Tyne there are 12 within a square mile, equalling the number of small supermarkets such as Tesco Express and Sainsbury’s Local.
Dentist Dr Andrew Kane offers beauty jabs and trains practitioners at Dr Kane Aesthetics Co in Jesmond, two miles from Newcastle city centre.
He says: “The aesthetics industry is showing remarkable growth despite the wider economic challenges.
“Our clinic’s experience mirrors this growth.
“We’ve recently expanded to a new, larger location and increased our staff to meet the rising demand.”
Women aged 40 to 60 form a significant portion of Dr Kane’s clientele and he adds: “They prefer subtle enhancements that offer a refreshed appearance without looking overdone or fake.
“It’s evident that people are recognising the value of natural-looking treatments.”
But some experts fear the prevalence of clinics may encourage a casual approach to the jabs, warning that consumers may opt for treatments without considering the risks.
Several of the Balham clinics list filler injections alongside non-invasive treatments such as facials.
Dawn Knight, Patient Trustee at trade body the Joint Council of Cosmetic Practitioners, says women are often failing to consider the consequences.
She says: “Seeing it out there on the High Street all day, every day, normalises something that does have risks.
“It’s sold as a drop in the ocean — have your filler, your eyebrows done and your hair curled.
“Not only should you not see these injections advertised in a shop window, but this can lead to decisions being made as a knee-jerk reaction.
“You might not be thinking about checking the premises, checking who is the insurer, or thinking of it as a medical procedure.”
The JCCP has seen a 400 per cent spike in complaints in a year, which Dawn links to a surge in clinic and practitioner numbers.
While many clinics — including SE1 Medical Aesthetics and Dr Kane Aesthetics — are staffed by medical practitioners, others are less trustworthy, she warns.
Botox is a prescription-only medicine, meaning it must be prescribed by a qualified medical practitioner, such as a doctor, dentist, pharmacist or nurse, after a face-to-face consultation.
But many flout the law, with some “practitioners” taking on clients having only completed a short online course.
Others rent spaces in hairdresser and beauty salons, tattoo shops, nightclubs and even hardware stores and call them “clinics”, according to Dawn, who adds: “It makes it difficult to know where the liability sits when it all goes wrong.”
Complainants to the JCCP include Amy Edwards, who paid for a cheap package of anti-wrinkle jabs last December.
She believed she would be attending a clinic after responding to a local practitioner advertising three areas of anti-wrinkle injection for £80 on Facebook.
Drooping eyelid
But it turned out to be a bed in the practitioner’s Northumberland living room.
NHS admin worker Amy, 36, says she did not see what product the practitioner loaded into the syringe, and that the jabs themselves were “extremely painful”.
She had hoped to come away looking fresh after months of sleepless nights with her newborn baby, now 21 months old, but says that within two days her right eyelid was swollen and drooping.
Amy, who is in a relationship, recalls: “On Christmas Day it looked as if I had had a stroke. My eye was completely closed.
“It was awful. I cried a lot, I hid away from people and hid my face. It massively affected my confidence and self-esteem.”
Amy says the practitioner suggested she get medical help — but refused to say which product had been injected or where it was from, and would not give her own credentials.
She eventually blocked Amy’s calls, preventing further contact.
The practitioner — currently advertising a string of Christmas filler deals — did not respond to our requests for comment.
Amy, from Cramlington, Northumberland, says it took 16 weeks for her to return to normal after using eye drops prescribed by another aesthetics practitioner.
She adds: “When I looked up the name of the training school on this woman’s certificates I could see that she had attended an online course, nothing classroom-based.
“With more clinics popping up all over the place now, I worry about how many practitioners are fully trained and how many have just done a quick course like mine did.”
Practitioner register Save Face, which lists Government-approved aesthetics practitioners on its website, is also receiving more complaints around botched treatments.
Director Ashton Collins says: “There is a definite rise and there will continue to be a rise year on year as the appetite of people wanting these treatments and those wanting to provide treatment grows.”
She says: “A recent survey by Save Face found that an overwhelming majority of 13- to 18-year-olds saw these treatments like getting your hair or nails done.”
And that is despite it being a criminal offence to administer injectable toxins or a filler by way of injection for a cosmetic purpose to a person under 18 in England.
She adds: “It’s a risk, especially because we know they are often not seeking reputable people.
“Customers are seeking out people who offer 50 per cent off deals.”
Ashton and Dawn want measures brought in to ensure public safety, including a ban on unlicensed cosmetic treatment providers in England and Wales.
The Government has announced plans for such legislation and a consultation is in progress.
Under the proposed ban, anyone carrying out the jabs would have to be trained and licensed, and their premises inspected.
Ashton adds: “We see loads of people who have been maimed and they can’t get any redress.
Read More on The Sun
“And if any lay people — by that I mean beauticians and hairdressers — are going to continue offering these treatments, they ought to be working under the strict supervision of medical professionals.
“It’s seen as a package, that to be successful and popular you have to look a certain way, and that can be extremely dangerous, especially for young women.”