“Dentists have a unique set of skills,” begins Dr Bob Khanna, principal and owner of The Dr Bob Khanna Training Institute and DrBK Clinic, at one of the 2026 Dentistry Show’s opening sessions in Birmingham. “Manual dexterity, understanding of infection control, patient safety and consent. These are useful transferable skills when it comes to facial aesthetics.” 

This was a fitting introduction for a session tackling some of the most pressing questions facing the profession with facial aesthetics, including the current absence of statutory regulation, scope of practice for dentists and dental teams, and the patient safety risks of an unregulated high street. 

Joining chairperson Dr Khanna were Anni Seaborne, head of general dentistry at Bupa Dental Care; Helen Graham, programme director of the Skin Ageing and Aesthetic Medicine MSc at the University of Manchester; Jalpesh Patel, member of the Education and Training Committee at the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP); Andrew Rankin, acting co-chair and registrar at the JCCP; and Charlotte Rose, team leader of environmental health at the City of Wolverhampton Council. 

Patient safety and current risks 

Charlotte Rose opened with a stark picture of the current landscape. With no statutory legislation requiring facial aesthetics practitioners to register with a local authority or regulatory body, the scale of what is happening on the high street is largely unknown. “We can only hazard a guess at the remit and volume of people and practices taking place on the high street,” she says. 

Procedures are frequently being performed without adequate understanding of consequence or risk, and unlicensed medicines compound the problem. Misleading credentials exacerbate it further. “The public struggles to distinguish a competent clinician from an unqualified one,” Rose adds. 

The pace of innovation is also a regulatory challenge. “We’ve recently been looking [into] bio fillers and next week it’ll be something different,” she explains. Despite this, Rose was clear that she sees the dental profession as a key ally in pushing for change. Dr Khanna echoed this, noting that artificial intelligence (AI) is making it increasingly difficult for patients to assess who they can trust. “There is a need for clarity to protect the public as well as clinicians,” he added. 

Regulation and licensing 

Andrew Rankin and Jalpesh Patel outlined the current regulatory picture and the road ahead. “If we envisage a future cosmetic sector that’s safe and led by professional, accountable individuals, then the dental profession has a central role to play,” Rankin began. 

The JCCP was formally established in 2018 in response to concerns about non-surgical cosmetic practice, and now works with stakeholders, including the General Dental Council (GDC), to issue guidance and clarify standards. At its formation, there was insufficient evidence to justify statutory intervention. That has since changed, explains Rankin. The Health and Care Act 2022 marked a turning point, placing the requirement for a licensing scheme in primary legislation for the first time. 

That scheme is likely to follow a tiered, traffic-light risk framework – developed with input from a stakeholder group including the GDC and the Royal College of Surgeons – in which red procedures carry the highest risk and sit within medical regulation, amber procedures such as Botox and dermal fillers will require a cosmetic license, and green procedures carry the lowest risk. 

Rankin was direct about scope of practice, saying: “The crucial question is not ‘is it within our scope?’ but ‘how do we evidence it?’.” The GDC’s ‘Safe Practitioner’ framework is relevant here – anything beyond core dental school training requires appropriate competence, qualification and indemnity. Aesthetic practice is no exception. 

When it comes to evidencing practice, Dr Khanna says: “Over-document if necessary. Contemporaneous notes and high-quality images are so important.” 

Education and ethics  

Anni Seaborne offered a unique corporate perspective from Bupa Dental Care, explaining that an estimated 5-10% of the network’s approximately 2,800 dentists are actively practicing facial aesthetics.  

Bupa applies the traffic-light framework across its practices, requires extensive portfolios covering toxins and fillers, and mandates 12 hours of CPD every two years – four of which must cover dermal fillers specifically. 

Each speaker emphasized the importance of building professional relationships with patients to ‘treat the whole person’ – none more so than Helen Graham, director of the MSc programme in skin ageing and aesthetic medicine. Set up by dermatologists to address the absence of a formal qualification for medically and dentally qualified practitioners, the programme asks students to consider whether a patient’s concern is about skin, ageing features or something that would be better addressed elsewhere. For Graham, ethics sit alongside competency. 

To close, Dr Khanna distilled the session into three pillars: competence, governance and accountability. “[Facial aesthetics] is not something you do on the side – it’s serious practice,” he said, calling for structured pathways into aesthetic practice and an end to certificate-only routes.  

Dentists, he noted, are already accustomed to operating within checks and balances. The challenge is ensuring that everyone practising in this space is too. 

Join us later this year for more sessions like this. Register your interest for the Dentistry Show London 2026 across 9-10 October at Excel London.