The four things worth checking
Price is not one of them. It is worth watching, but as a signal rather than a criterion: a price well below the market is usually telling you something about one of these four.
Checking the practitioner
If your practitioner is a doctor, they must be registered with the General Medical Council, and you can search the GMC register yourself in about thirty seconds. Nurses are registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council, and the same applies.
Beyond the statutory registers, look for membership of bodies that exist specifically for aesthetic practice:
- British College of Aesthetic Medicine (BCAM) for doctors
- British Association of Cosmetic Nurses (BACN) for nurses
- Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners (JCCP), which maintains a public register
- Save Face, an accredited register for practitioners and clinics
None of these is compulsory, which is rather the point. A practitioner who has joined one has chosen to be held to a standard they did not legally have to meet, and membership is a reasonable proxy for clinical expertise when you have no other way to judge it.
Accreditations should be listed on the clinic's own website. If you cannot find them, that is an answer.
Checking the clinic
For clinics in England, the Care Quality Commission is the independent regulator of health care services, and registration can be checked on the CQC website.
Worth knowing: CQC registration is not required for filler alone. Many aesthetics clinics are not registered, because filler by itself is not a regulated activity. A clinic that is registered has it because it provides regulated medical activity, so seeing it tells you the premises operate to a clinical standard rather than a beauty one.
Industry recognition is worth a look too, for the same reason as the voluntary registers: nobody has to enter, and the judging is done by people who understand the work. PHI Clinic won Best Non Surgical Result and Outstanding Achievement in Aesthetics at the 2023 Aesthetics Awards.
Online reviews are useful for a different purpose. Sites like Trustpilot and RealSelf are less good at telling you whether a clinic is safe, and rather good at telling you whether a particular practitioner is experienced in the area you want treated.
Experience in the area you want treated
This is the check people most often skip, and it matters more than the clinic's overall reputation.
Filler is not one skill. The technique, the product and the risk profile all change depending on where the needle goes, and a practitioner who is excellent in one area is not automatically excellent in another.
Areas worth asking about specifically:
- Lips. Lip filler and lip enhancement are the most requested treatments and the most visibly wrong when done badly. Ask to see lip injection work rather than general before and afters.
- Cheeks and temples. Cheek fillers and temple fillers restore volume in the mid and upper face, and both need product placed deep rather than near the skin surface.
- Chin and jawline. Jawline fillers and chin work are structural, and use firmer products than anywhere else on the face.
- Tear troughs. The least forgiving area there is, and the one where inexperience shows fastest.
- Nose. Nose reshaping with filler sits alongside the area between the brows as the highest-risk site on the face. Experience here is not optional.
- Around the mouth. Nasolabial folds, marionette lines and jowls are often better treated by supporting the tissues above them than by filling the line itself, which is a judgement call rather than a technique.
- Lines and wrinkles. Softer products placed more superficially, and a different skill again from structural work.
- Full face. A non-surgical facelift combines several of these. Facial fillers used across the face need someone thinking about facial contours as a whole rather than treating one feature at a time.
Someone who does fifty jawlines a month is a different proposition from someone who does one. Ask which areas they treat most often, and ask to see work in yours.
Checking the product
The product matters, and so does whether anyone will tell you what it is.
You should be able to ask what is going into your face and get a specific answer: the brand, the range and the product name. If a clinic is vague about it, or the price seems unusually low, those two things are usually connected.
At PHI we use Juvéderm by Allergan, and the specific product within the range is chosen for the area being treated rather than out of habit. All of it is temporary hyaluronic acid, which means it can be dissolved if a result is not what you wanted. Permanent fillers cannot be, which is why we do not use them.
Our doctors lecture nationally and internationally, teaching other professionals how to administer injectable products. That is worth knowing not because of the credential, but because the people teaching a technique tend to be the ones who understand where it goes wrong.
The question most people forget to ask
What happens if something goes wrong?
Complications from dermal filler treatment in London are uncommon, but they are real, and the difference between a good outcome and a bad one is usually how quickly they are managed.
Swelling and bruising are normal and settle within days. What is not normal is pain that increases rather than eases, skin that changes colour, or any change in vision. A clinic should tell you the difference before you leave, not after you call.
Ask any clinic you are considering:
- Do you keep hyaluronidase on site? This is the enzyme that dissolves hyaluronic acid filler, and in a vascular occlusion it is needed within hours, not days.
- Who would I see if there were a problem at the weekend?
- Would the person treating me recognise the early signs?
A clinic that answers these easily has thought about them. A clinic that has not is telling you something.
Red flags
- Prices far below the market. Filler has a wholesale cost. A price that undercuts it usually means less product, a cheaper product, or an unqualified injector.
- Treatment on the day you first walk in. Good clinics build in time to think.
- No consultation, or a consultation with someone other than the person treating you.
- Treatment in a non-clinical setting. Hotel rooms, salons and homes are all still legal for filler in the UK, and all still a bad idea.
- Vagueness about products or qualifications. Both should be easy questions.
- Pressure, discounts that expire, or package deals on volume. Filler is not something to buy in bulk.
Why we make you wait
At PHI Clinic on Harley Street we require at least 24 hours between your initial consultation and any treatment.
That is deliberate, it costs us bookings, and it exists for patient safety rather than for appearances. Every patient gets time to consider what has been recommended, away from the clinic and away from anyone who might benefit from a yes. If a decision does not survive a day of thinking about it, it was not the right decision.
It also means your consultation is a consultation rather than a sales appointment, which is a distinction worth insisting on wherever you go.
Book a consultation
If you are weighing up where to have dermal filler in London, the most useful thing you can do is ask the questions above of everyone on your shortlist, including us.
Book a consultation with one of our practitioners at PHI Clinic. They will assess your face, set out a treatment plan and its cost before anything is agreed, explain what is realistic, and tell you honestly if the answer is that you do not need treatment yet.