A Century-Long Struggle for Regulation in Hairdressing

Origins: Professional Roots and Public Protection

The regulation of hairdressing has deep historical roots that pre-date the modern trade by centuries. In medieval London, barbers were not merely groomers but practitioners of minor surgery. As early as 1435, a Guild or Fellowship of Surgeons operated alongside the Barbers' Company, leading to persistent disputes over professional boundaries. These tensions resulted in the first Royal Charter granted to the Barbers' Company by Edward IV in 1462, empowering it to regulate surgical practice, uphold standards, and eliminate charlatans.

This uneasy relationship culminated in the Act of Parliament of 1540, which formally created the Company of Barbers and Surgeons of London. While separating the duties of barber and surgeon, the Act was fundamentally about public safety and professional competence. Over the following two centuries, the professions diverged completely, with surgeons eventually forming what became the Royal College of Surgeons in 1745. Hairdressing, however, was left behind, detached from statutory protection and professional recognition.

The Record, by Date

The case for compulsory registration is presented in 2026 as new and urgent. The parliamentary record shows the same request, on substantially the same grounds, in every generation since the 1930s — and the same answer. The dates below are each discussed in the sections that follow; Hansard references are given in the source list.

Date	What happened	What it shows
1922	Employers and employees form the voluntary Hairdressers Registration Council	The trade's own first attempt, voluntary by design
1936	A registration bill receives its First Reading in the Commons (29 July); lost on prorogation	First parliamentary attempt at statutory recognition
1937	A Hairdressers (Registration) Bill is introduced in the House of Lords	Withdrawn or lost after objections from shop-assistant and co-operative interests
1938	Revised Lords bill debated on Second Reading (23 March); the Home Office reports the Minister of Health sees "no danger to health"	The public-health case put and answered, a generation before the Act
1939	Renewed Commons attempt under the Ten-Minute Rule (28 March, Sir Robert Tasker); halted by war	Fourth attempt in four years; no further progress
1947	Commission of Inquiry under the Wages Council Act reports on the trade	Oversupply of poorly trained entrants; no barrier to opening a salon
1949	Commons Second Reading debate (11 February): bill read a second time and committed, against Home Office advice	Trainees under-taught and pushed into renting salon space prematurely — fifteen years before the Act, and not addressed by it. Government's objection: no demonstrated public-health demand, and local Acts already covered hygiene
1964	Hairdressers (Registration) Act passed as a Private Member's Bill	Compulsory registration removed in passage; voluntary register only
1978	Commons: Ten-Minute Rule bill to amend the Act (January); oral questions on the Council (June and November), the last describing the Council as "a shambles" with the registrar dismissed and police inquiring into its accounts	The one year Parliament examined the Council rather than the request; the minister declined repeal and noted the 1964 Bill's only main change in passage had been mandatory to voluntary
2015	Commons adjournment debate on registration of hairdressers	Government declines compulsory registration on proportionality grounds
2025	House of Commons Library briefing (June) restates the position: no mandatory licensing, voluntary register, protection via existing law and local authority powers	Settled position, restated
2026	Written ministerial answer (January): no plans to introduce mandatory registration	Position reaffirmed by the current government
2026	Presentation bill on registration of hairdressers (September)	The same request, in the tenth decade — see below

The First Modern Push: 1922–1939

The first serious attempt to secure state recognition for hairdressers came in 1922, when employers and employees together formed the voluntary Hairdressers Registration Council. Its purpose was clear: to raise standards, formalise training, and protect the public by identifying competent practitioners through certification.

This voluntary initiative acknowledged a fundamental truth — that without regulation, anyone could call themselves a hairdresser, regardless of skill or training. The Council promoted apprenticeships, education, and competence, but its leaders quickly recognised the limitations of a purely voluntary system.

By 1936, the matter reached Parliament. A Bill for statutory recognition secured its First Reading in the Commons on 29 July 1936, but prorogation prevented further progress. The campaign then moved to the Lords: a bill was introduced there in 1937 and, after objections from shop-assistant and co-operative interests, reintroduced in revised form and debated on Second Reading on 23 March 1938. Its sponsor cited the 1931 census figure of 91,600 people in the trade and county-court awards for permanent-wave burns; the Home Office replied that the Minister of Health saw no danger to health requiring legislation. A further Commons attempt followed on 28 March 1939 under the Ten-Minute Rule, moved by Sir Robert Tasker, only to be halted by the outbreak of war. Four attempts in four years, in both Houses, and the same objection each time.

Post-War Reality: Public Risk and Exploitation

Following the Second World War, the absence of regulation became increasingly problematic. A 1947 Commission of Inquiry under the Wages Council Act highlighted serious structural issues within the trade. It noted that the public often accepted indifferent standards, that wages stagnated despite trade expansion, and that unrestricted entry encouraged an oversupply of poorly trained practitioners.

The report was blunt: anyone, without experience, training, or oversight, could open a salon. In many areas, consumers had no alternative and were forced to accept substandard or unsafe services.

The Commons Second Reading debate of 11 February 1949 exposed further abuses. Young trainees, often women, were given inadequate instruction, encouraged to rent salon space prematurely, and left professionally damaged when their lack of skill became evident. These practices were not merely exploitative; they undermined the future workforce and placed the public at risk. The mover put the voluntary Council's register at "more than 40,000" of an estimated 100,000 hairdressers. The Under-Secretary at the Home Office declined to recommend the bill: no public-health authority and no section of the public had asked for national legislation, local Acts already provided for hygiene and inspection, and the proposed controls were stricter than those applying to doctors or architects. The House gave the bill a Second Reading regardless; it went no further.

Health, Hygiene, and the Public Interest

Throughout these debates, one argument remained consistent: regulation was not about protecting hairdressers from competition, but about protecting the public. Hairdressing touches every person, men, women, and children, throughout their lives. Yet it remained largely unregulated despite involving chemicals, electrical equipment, skin penetration, and infection risk.

Parliamentarians warned that danger did not only exist in backstreet salons. Poorly trained operators behind gilded shopfronts posed equal risk. Chemical depilation, electrical epilation, and cosmetic treatments were being performed by untrained individuals, sometimes resulting in permanent injury.

What does address them, and what has always addressed them, is local authority regulation under public health powers. The byelaws made under Section 77 of the Public Health Act 1961, and the premises licensing schemes adopted by at least eight local authorities, focus precisely on what matters: cleanliness of premises, sterilisation of instruments, hygiene of practitioners, and infection control. These are enforceable, inspectable, and directly relevant to consumer safety. The 1964 Act, by contrast, created nothing more than a membership scheme with no enforcement powers whatsoever.

The Hairdressers (Registration) Act 1964

After more than four decades of debate, the Hairdressers (Registration) Act 1964 was finally passed. Piloted as a Private Members' Bill, it established the Hairdressing Council and created a statutory register of qualified hairdressers.

However, the Act was deliberately limited in scope. Mandatory training and compulsory registration for all new entrants, originally envisaged during parliamentary debate, were removed on the grounds that they were considered "unduly restrictive." What remained was not a system of State regulation, but a narrow statutory framework permitting only a voluntary register. A trade minister confirmed the point from the despatch box in November 1978: the 1964 Act was a Private Member's Bill, not a Government Bill, and "the only main change made was that the mandatory regulation proposed in the Bill was changed to a voluntary one."

This limited statutory footing lies at the heart of today's problem: the Hairdressing Council repeatedly acts beyond its lawful powers (ultra vires), presenting itself as a regulator despite having no authority to regulate, enforce standards, confer State registration, or maintain a comprehensive and accurate register.

The Schedule: who appoints the Council

The Act does not create an independent regulator. Its Schedule provides for the Council's members to be appointed by named organisations within the trade — among them the National Hairdressers' Federation (today's National Hair & Beauty Federation) and the Incorporated Guild of Hairdressers, Wigmakers and Perfumers. The Council is, by statutory design, a committee of trade-body appointees. It is not independent of the organisations it would regulate, and its senior officers have routinely moved between the Council and the trade bodies that appoint to it. Any proposal to make registration with the Council compulsory is a proposal to give those trade bodies control of entry to the occupation.

The Schedule as enacted also records where the Council came from. Paragraph 2 provided that the first trade members were to be drawn from, and the first independent members appointed by, "the Hairdressers' Registration Council, that is to say, the company registered by that name" — the voluntary body formed in 1922. The statutory Council was seeded by the voluntary one. Paragraph 2 was repealed as spent in 2004, but the lineage it records is the same one that runs through the Council's three names today.

Section 3: who the Act entitles to register

The Act entitles one class of person to registration. Section 3(1) requires an apprenticeship or a course approved under section 4, and "a reasonable and sufficient standard to qualify him to practise." Section 2 then defines the register as containing "all persons who are entitled under the provisions of this Act to be registered." The only other route the Act ever contained, section 3(2), was a grandfather clause for people with three years' practice before 1 January 1966; it could apply to no one who entered the trade after 1963, and it was repealed as spent in 2004. Any route to the register that is not section 3(1) — registration on years of practice, a trainee grade, an associate grade — is the Council's, not Parliament's. The Act's only term for a person on the register is "registered person" (section 15); "State Registered" appears nowhere in it.

Consequences: Conduct Beyond the Act

Over time, the Hairdressing Council has moved beyond the narrow role envisaged by the 1964 Act. Despite having authority only to operate a voluntary register, it has repeatedly behaved as though it were a statutory regulator, asserting status, issuing post-nominal style designations, and implying State recognition where none exists. These actions do not arise from, nor are they supported by, the Act.

Nor is concern about the Council's governance new. In November 1978, fourteen years after the Act, an MP asked the Secretary of State for Trade to repeal it on the grounds that the Council had "become a shambles": the chairman was said to be acting in an autocratic and arbitrary way, the registrar had been dismissed, the police were making inquiries into the Council's accounts, and the two MPs who had sat on the Council had resigned, leaving "no public accountability of any kind." The minister declined repeal, pointing the questioner to the courts and to the Act's Schedule 1 procedures for replacing a chairman. Earlier that year a Ten-Minute Rule bill to amend the Act had been moved by an MP who declared his own membership of the Council.

Even within its limited remit, the Council has been unable to maintain a reliable register numbering only a few thousand hairdressers and barbers. The register itself provides stark evidence of this failure. Practitioners remain listed years after allowing their registration to lapse, with outdated trading names, incorrect locations, and in at least one documented case, a contact email address belonging to an internet service provider that ceased operating fifteen years ago.

The issue is not merely one of competence, but of feasibility and cost. Government estimates for establishing a full statutory registration scheme placed the cost between £10 million and £13 million. No credible funding mechanism has ever been identified. It is unclear who would bear these costs — individual practitioners, consumers, or the taxpayer — particularly in an industry dominated by small businesses and sole traders.

Meanwhile, many local authorities already possess powers to license and regulate hairdressing premises on public health and safety grounds, and several actively exercise these powers. This localised approach allows proportionate regulation tailored to regional needs, without creating a costly national bureaucracy.

Compounding these concerns are persistent governance failures. The Council has repeatedly failed to publish accounts in a timely and transparent manner, undermining confidence and eliminating any meaningful public accountability. Given its conduct beyond the Act, operational failures, and lack of financial transparency, the continued existence of the Hairdressers (Registration) Act 1964 can no longer be justified. The logical and proportionate remedy is repeal of the Act and formal dissolution of the Hairdressing Council, rather than further attempts to retrofit regulatory authority that Parliament has never granted.

Constitution and Admitted Purpose Drift

The 1964 Act did not create a trade organisation. It created a body with a single, narrow function: to maintain a voluntary register of hairdressers. Yet the Council's own retiring chairman has publicly stated, in a video posted to social media, that he is proud the Council has "evolved into a trade organisation." This is not a minor rebranding; it is an admission that the Council has moved away from its statutory purpose.

Trade organisations exist to advocate for their members' commercial interests, to lobby government on policy matters, and to campaign for regulatory changes that benefit their sector. None of these activities is authorised by the 1964 Act. A body created by statute to maintain a register cannot lawfully transform itself into something Parliament never intended. The chairman's statement is, in effect, an acknowledgement of conduct beyond the Act — not as an aberration, but as an institutional identity.

More fundamentally, the Council has not shown how it is currently constituted. The Act's Schedule specifies the composition of the Council, including appointments from designated bodies. One of them, the Incorporated Guild of Hairdressers, Wigmakers and Perfumers, was dissolved as a company on 17 January 2023, with no successor body named in the Act to exercise its appointment power. The Council has not published its current membership against the Schedule, nor explained how vacancies arising from a dissolved appointing body have been filled.

The combination is serious. The Council has publicly admitted it no longer confines itself to its statutory purpose, while being unable or unwilling to show that it is constituted as the Act requires. What remains is a body trading on the residual authority of legislation whose limits it has long since exceeded. This is not an argument for reform; it is evidence that the 1964 Act has been rendered a dead letter by those entrusted with its implementation.

The access the Council has had

Whatever its constitution, the Council has had a seat. Departmental transparency returns record it at every one of the five personal care sector roundtables convened by the Department for Business and Trade since July 2023 — two under Kevin Hollinrake, two under Gareth Thomas (19 November 2024 and 3 July 2025), one under Kate Dearden on 17 December 2025 — and at a separate meeting with a Treasury minister on 21 March 2024 "to discuss sector concerns with VAT." Six recorded ministerial meetings in under three years for a body whose only statutory function is to keep a voluntary register, and whose Act, at section 14, gives it no powers over charges or conditions of employment. The organisation representing self-employed hairdressers has had none. The full record across four departments is set out in Who Is in the Room.

One Body, Three Names

The Act creates "the Hairdressing Council." The body trades as "the Hair & Barber Council." In the February 2025 CBI Economics report commissioned by the British Hair Consortium, of which the Council is a member, it is listed as "The Hair & Barber Council statutory authority" — in a document that states, nine pages earlier, that registration under the Act "is voluntary." When the Department for Business and Trade recorded the Council's attendance at a ministerial roundtable on 17 December 2025, it used the statutory name: "The Hairdressing Council." Government knows what the body is. The campaign that includes the body describes it as something else.

The campaign's own literature suggests it has not read the statute it wants amended. The British Hair Consortium's post-Autumn Budget 2025 survey reported that 94% of respondents "called for mandating of the Act of Hairdressing 1964," and the Salon Employers Association's October 2026 Budget submission recommends that government "mandate the Hairdressing Act 1964." There is no such Act under either name.

Existing Local Authority Powers: A Proportionate Alternative

The argument for national mandatory registration assumes no effective regulatory framework exists. This is false. At least eight local authorities, including Edinburgh, and those covered by the County of Cleveland Act 1987, already possess and exercise powers to register and regulate hairdressing premises. These provide a clear and proven model of proportionate regulation that Parliament has endorsed without requiring a national scheme.

The County of Cleveland Act 1987, for example, requires registration of both practitioners and premises, imposes criminal sanctions for non-compliance (up to Level 3 on the standard scale), grants powers of entry for inspection under Section 17 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, and mandates the display of certificates and byelaws. The Edinburgh Corporation Order Confirmation Act 1991 contains similar provisions, requiring premises registration, providing clear grounds for refusal based on suitability, establishing judicial appeal to the sheriff, and imposing criminal penalties for operating without registration.

The associated byelaws, such as those made under Section 77 of the Public Health Act 1961 for the former Borough of Teesside, focus precisely on what consumer protection requires: cleanliness of premises, sterilisation of instruments, hygiene standards for practitioners, proper waste disposal, and the use of clean materials for each customer. These are substantive, enforceable requirements directly relevant to public health and safety.

Feature	Local Authority Model	Hairdressing Council Model
Basis	Premises-based, targeted enforcement	Individual-based, no enforcement
Accountability	Locally accountable, democratic structures	Nationally opaque, private body
Focus	Public health outcomes	Professional status, post-nominals
Fees	Reasonable, cost-recovery basis	Set nationally, arbitrary rates
Enforcement	Criminal sanctions, powers of entry, judicial oversight	None

The existence of these schemes demonstrates that proportionate regulation is already available where local authorities choose to implement it — without the need for a national bureaucracy, without the costs estimated at £10–13 million, and without the involvement of a body that has proven incapable of maintaining an accurate register of a few thousand voluntary members. The question is not whether regulation is possible, but why any local authority would cede this proven, accountable, enforceable model to a private organisation with no enforcement powers, no financial transparency, and a documented record of acting beyond its legal authority.

False Claims of Government Mandate

The Council's website explicitly states that it holds "the mandate from Government to protect and develop the current voluntary register" and that "we alone hold this Government mandate." No such mandate exists. The 1964 Act created a body with narrowly defined powers; it conferred no exclusive mandate, no governmental authority, and no monopoly over registration.

When challenged directly on this point, the Council's own Registrar has acknowledged in writing that the organisation is not a public authority. Yet publicly, and in submissions to Parliament, the opposite is asserted. The gap between the written admission and the public claim raises serious questions about the accuracy of the Council's representations to government, Parliament, and the public.

The Statistics Behind the Campaign

The campaign for mandatory registration has been accompanied by statistical claims of considerable scale, most of them originating in a February 2025 report by CBI Economics commissioned by the British Hair Consortium, of which the Council is a member and whose foreword the Council's chief executive signed. Those claims — a £2.4bn loss of VAT receipts, a 93% fall in employment, no apprenticeships by 2027, £14.4bn in lost productivity — are assessed in full, with sources, in our methodological deconstruction of the report. The relevant points for the regulatory argument are these.

• The £2.4bn is not a measured loss. It is the cumulative gap, 2009–2023, between the turnover of VAT-registered hair and beauty businesses and what that turnover would have been had it tracked consumer-price inflation, with 20% applied to the whole gap. It is a hypothetical shortfall against an assumed trend.
• HMRC's own estimate of the VAT actually lost to non-compliance in hairdressing over the same period, obtained by Freedom of Information request, is £22.7 million. That figure answers a different question — measured non-compliance, not a modelled shortfall — but it is the figure a claim about "tax avoidance" would need, and it is two orders of magnitude smaller.
• The forecasts have now been tested against outturn. Employment did not collapse; apprenticeship starts did not reach zero. The detail is on the linked page.
• None of these figures is evidence for a register. A voluntary register of qualified individuals does not collect VAT, does not alter employment status, and does not fund an apprenticeship. The statistics establish, at most, that the sector is under cost pressure. They are presented in support of a measure that would not touch any of the costs described.

That these figures have been presented to Parliamentary committees, cited in media coverage, and used to lobby Ministers raises serious concerns about the integrity of the evidence base on which policy decisions are being invited.

From Consumer Protection to Competition Elimination

The rhetoric of the Hairdressing Council and its allied trade bodies has shifted markedly in recent years. What was once framed as consumer protection is now openly expressed as opposition to competition. Self-employed hairdressers, mobile practitioners, and chair renters are characterised not as entrepreneurs serving consumer demand, but as threats to be eliminated through regulatory capture.

This shift is revealing. If the concern were genuinely consumer safety, the focus would be on hygiene standards, premises inspection, and practitioner competence — matters already addressed by local authority byelaws and public health powers. Instead, the campaign targets business models: chair rental arrangements, self-employment structures, and VAT registration thresholds. These are commercial matters, not safety matters.

Commercial Conflicts and Captured Standards

The Council's activities extend beyond claims of regulatory authority into commercial arrangements that raise serious questions of probity. Insurance policies marketed specifically to the hairdressing sector have been designed, by the insurer's own admission, "in conjunction with The Hair & Barber Council." These policies create compliance requirements that can only be satisfied through Council membership or through products sold by Council sponsors.

One such sponsor, whose chief executive sits on the Council's board, manufactures allergy testing products that the Council's own protocols specifically recommend. The circularity is striking: the body that claims regulatory authority writes standards that benefit its sponsors, whose representatives sit on the body that writes the standards. This has the hallmarks of commercial capture dressed in statutory clothing.

Financial Opacity

The 1964 Act requires the Council to keep audited accounts and to furnish copies on request. It does not, however, require public filing. The Council is not a company (no filing with Companies House), not a charity (no filing with the Charity Commission), and not government-funded (no departmental accounts). It therefore falls through every regulatory gap, operating with complete financial opacity.

Without financial transparency, the full extent of commercial relationships, sponsorship arrangements, and potential conflicts of interest remains hidden from public scrutiny.

Training, Fragmentation, and Industry Division

The industry has long been divided over training models and qualifications. The Hairdressing Council has historically favoured extended apprenticeships or multi-year training routes, while private and commercial schools have argued for shorter, intensive programmes aligned with international norms. These disagreements, coupled with longstanding rivalries between trade bodies, have prevented the emergence of a single, coherent voice for the industry.

However, these divisions do not justify national statutory regulation. Significant public funds have already been invested in further education colleges, apprenticeships, and recognised qualifications. The issue is not an absence of training pathways, but the persistent misrepresentation of regulatory status. Public exposure arises not because registration is voluntary, but because consumers are led to believe that a form of State regulation exists when it does not.

The Unfinished Business

More than a century — 104 years — has passed since the first organised movement to register hairdressers began, and over 60 years since the creation of the Hairdressing Council. The lesson of that history is not that Parliament failed to complete a regulatory project, but that it has repeatedly and consciously declined to impose compulsory State regulation on the trade.

This position has been reaffirmed in the most recent House of Commons Library Research Briefing (June 2025), which confirms that hairdressing in the UK has no mandatory practitioner licensing, that the 1964 Act provides only for a voluntary register, and that public protection is delivered through existing consumer law, health and safety legislation, and local authority licensing powers. The briefing documents repeated ministerial statements rejecting mandatory registration on the grounds of proportionality, cost, and lack of demonstrated market failure. A written ministerial answer in January 2026 restated that the government has no plans to introduce mandatory registration.

Importantly, the briefing also illustrates the extent to which confusion has become institutionalised. References to "state registered" hairdressers appear despite the absence of any statutory basis for State registration or protected titles under the Act. It is highly likely that this language originates not from parliamentary intent but from representations made by the Hairdressing Council itself, underscoring how deeply misleading narratives have permeated public and official discourse.

Commercially-funded campaigns were presented as independent research, and predictions of steep decline were offered without acknowledgement that every previous such prediction had proven false. Parliament was not fully informed of the material interests at stake.

September 2026: The Same Request, Again

On 14 September 2026 a presentation bill concerning the registration of hairdressers was presented in the House of Commons. A presentation bill is read a first time without debate or vote; its text need not be published at presentation, and few such bills receive a second reading. Its significance is not legislative but rhetorical: it allows the campaign to say that "legislation has been presented" during the party-conference season and ahead of the Budget on 28 October.

Whatever the bill's text eventually provides, the questions this page raises come before it. Is the body the bill would make compulsory currently constituted under the Act's Schedule? Is it independent of the trade organisations that appoint to it? Has it published accounts? Does it hold the "Government mandate" it claims, or is it, as its Registrar has confirmed in writing, not a public authority? And has anything in the record since 1936 changed, other than the names of the people asking?

The unresolved issue, therefore, is not regulatory absence but regulatory misrepresentation. A voluntary body continues to act as though it possesses State authority, despite Parliament having repeatedly closed the door on such a model, most recently in 2025 and 2026. In light of this clear and settled position, the continued existence of the Hairdressers (Registration) Act 1964 serves only to sustain confusion and enable conduct beyond its terms.