A growing number of teenage girls from England are risking their health by heading to Scotland for cosmetic lip filler treatment from unqualified “Wild West” back street beauticians.
The growing cross-border trade is possible because there is no Scottish ban on under-18s getting risky cosmetic work.
Health professionals said Scotland’s lack of regulations made the country the “worst in Europe” when it came to botched Botox and lip filler treatments.
They warn that “horrific” rogue practitioners with no medical training are injecting the teens – including children as young as 15 – in gyms, hairdressing salons and the back of cars.
Lip filler treatment from a regulated clinic may typically be at least £200. But some on social media are offering the work for as little as £50 – a sign unsafe operators could be using cheaper, black-market products.
SaveFace, the group which successfully campaigned for a law passed in England in 2021 which banned Botox and fillers for under-18s, is calling on the Scottish Government to bring in a ban.
Co-founder Ashton Collins said dozens of parents in England had come to her organisation for guidance after their teenage daughters had travelled to Scotland for lip filler work which had gone wrong.
Some of the botched work had led to scarring, bruising and bad infections, she said.
SaveFace dealt with three such cross-border cases in 2022, rising to nine in 2023. Another 17 families came to them for help last year, according to figures shared with The i Paper.
“It’s mostly mothers who are shocked and looking for advice,” said Collins.
“Having to tell parents there’s nothing they can really do in terms of complaining, you can understand how angry they are.”
Collins said the 29 cases she had been involved in was the tip of the iceberg since girls in England had become aware there was no ban north of the border.
SaveFace has helped people suffering from bruising and infections after botched lip fillers (Photo: SaveFace)“A lot of them have dialogue [with unqualified beauticians] by Instagram or TikTok or other social media before they go to Scotland,” she said.
“The big thing they want is lip fillers – but they’re not told about the possibility of lumps, scarring, bad infections and tissue death.”
Collins said “irresponsible” non-medics willing to inject dermal fillers “don’t care about age – they just want the money”.
‘When something goes wrong, they block you’
“People tell us of having treatments in the back of cars, in the back of gyms, in the back of hairdressing salons. They use spurious names on Instagram, use aesthetics branding, and when something goes wrong, they block you.”
There is no ban on under-18s getting cosmetic work in Wales or Northern Ireland either, but Collins said the cross-border trips from England to Scotland was the most common way girls were avoiding restrictions.
Susan McMahon, a qualified nurse who has a cosmetic clinic in Glasgow, said she had under-18s from England turn up looking for fillers “because they know there’s no ban”.
She added: “It’s happening around half a dozen times a year. It’s an outright ‘no’ from me. Responsible clinics won’t do that.”
“It’s hugely embarrassing that we have this unregulated area [no under-18s ban] in Scotland. Unscrupulous people can do whatever they like.”
The Scottish Government has been running a consultation on new regulations for cosmetic procedures, with decisions set to be announced this summer.
But Collins is worried that the SNP Government will not ban treatments for under-18s.
Public health minister Jenni Minto previously told the BBC that she would have to “look very carefully at age, because of course in Scotland we give 16-year-olds the vote”.
Health professionals said the failure to regulate “rogue” beauticians was harming people of all ages. They said they were regularly having to fix botched Botox work which had led to lumps, infections and muscle paralysis.
In Scotland, there are 500 qualified practitioners such as nurses, doctors and dentists offering non-surgical cosmetic procedures like Botox or fillers, who are registered with the regulator, Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS). Their clinics are subject to fees and regular inspections.
But an unknown number of “rogue”, non-medically qualified operators who often brand themselves as “aestheticians” on social media are not monitored by HIS.
Marie Snapp, 42, has suffered from botched Botox work delivered by a non-medic. She paid around £140 for the injections on her forehead and around her eyes at a Glasgow beauty salon in 2017.
“When I woke up, my face was frozen on one side,” she told The i Paper. “I couldn’t control it. It looked like I had Bell’s palsy. Water would be dripping out of one side of my mouth.”
Marie Snapps lost movement on one side of her face after botched Botox treatment in GlasgowSnapp said she began getting movement back after “three or four weeks of numbness” but had problems with movement in her face “for months” afterwards.
‘I don’t think it was real Botox’
“I was so angry,” she said. “I asked for my money back. She [the beautician] blocked my messages. And before long, the salon was closed. I don’t think it was real Botox – God knows where she got it from. She didn’t have a clue what she was doing.”
Jackie Partridge, a nurse independent prescriber who runs a clinic in Edinburgh, said the Scottish Government should end the “two-tier system” by banning non-medics from offering fillers and Botox.
“We have these black-market practitioners, who have no medical training, working everywhere – in the back of vans and cars, the back of hairdressing salons. It’s horrific,” said Partridge, a founding member of the British Association of Medical Aesthetic Nurses (Baman).
“It is still the Wild West,” said Partridge. “The regulation is a complete mess. We’re a joke in the UK compared to colleagues in Europe. And in Scotland, we still haven’t banned under-18s.”
Darren McKeown, a qualified plastic surgeon who runs a clinic in Glasgow, added: “Even in the Wild West there was a code of honour. But there’s nothing to stop these rogue operators.
“It can be unlicenced products coming from China and other places. So you have the untrained injecting the unknown into the unwitting.”
Nestor Demosthenous, a doctor who runs a beauty clinic in Edinburgh, has joined calls for the Scottish Government to ban non-medically trained people from injecting.
“Once every couple of weeks we’ll have someone come in needing bad work fixed. I treated a woman with threads hanging out of her face, with a raging infection, saying she had got a thread facelift done by her hairdresser.”
“In Europe it’s considered ridiculous that the UK allows non-medics to operate – it blows their minds. In Scotland, with the lack of a ban on under-18s, it’s a particularly bad shitshow,” added Dr Demosthenous.
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Partridge is worried the regulator, HIS, is not big enough to investigate all the non-medics delivering injectables.
The Baman co-founder is also concerned that ministers may stop short of banning non-medics from injecting Botox and fillers.
Minto, Scotland’s public health minister, said: “We are currently analysing results of our non-surgical cosmetic procedure consultation, which included questions asking for views on age restrictions.”
The SNP minister added: “Our goal is to ensure robust and proportionate regulation is introduced. We will publish our consultation analysis and announce next steps before the end of June.”
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