Executive Summary
- Scope: 49 quarterly ministerial meetings returns from the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), HM Treasury, the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), January 2021 to March 2026, 10,521 recorded meetings.
- Sector meetings: 34 of the 10,521 involved a hair or beauty organisation or keyword. 30 were at DBT. HM Treasury three, DHSC one, DfE none.
- Who attends: The British Beauty Council appears 17 times and is the only sector body to appear in three departments. NHBF 13, the Hairdressing Council (trading as the Hair and Barber Council) six, BABTAC five, the Salon Employers Association once.
- Who has never attended: Salon Owners United, the Freelance Hairdressers Association, the British Hair Consortium and Habia appear in no return from any of the four departments.
- The roundtables: DBT has held five multi-body "personal care sector" roundtables since July 2023. The same five organisations attended all five. No body representing self-employed or freelance professionals has attended any.
- Skills and licensing: In eighteen months of published DfE returns there is no meeting with any hair or beauty organisation. DHSC met the sector once in three years, on cosmetic licensing, with one beauty trade body present.
What the Data Is, and What It Is Not
Ministerial meetings returns are published under the Ministerial Code. They record meetings between ministers and external organisations or individuals. They do not record meetings with officials, correspondence, phone calls, or attendance at events unless the department chooses to list it. An organisation can lobby a department extensively and never appear in a return, provided it never sits down with a minister.
The returns are also uneven. Departments use different formats, spellings and levels of detail; roundtable attendee lists are sometimes given in full and sometimes as "and others"; dates are occasionally wrong. Four HM Treasury quarters — October–December 2024, January–March 2025, April–June 2025 and October–December 2025 — are not published on gov.uk at the date of writing and are absent here. DfE returns are available only from October 2024, so no comparison with the previous government is possible for that department.
What "zero" means
A zero in this analysis means the organisation's name does not appear in any published ministerial meetings return for that department in the period covered. It does not mean the organisation has had no contact with the department. It means that contact, if any, was not at ministerial level, or was not recorded.
Method
All 49 returns were downloaded from gov.uk as published; the files and the analysis workbook are in the source library. Each row was searched, case-insensitively, in both the organisation and purpose fields, for the following terms.
| Organisation | Search terms |
|---|---|
| British Beauty Council | "British Beauty Council" |
| NHBF | "NHBF"; "Hair and/& Beauty Federation"; "National Health and Beauty Federation" (a misspelling in one DBT return) |
| BABTAC | "BABTAC"; "British Association of Beauty Therapy & Cosmetology" — the returns never use the acronym |
| Hairdressing Council | "Hairdressing Council"; "Hair and Barber Council" |
| Salon Employers Association | "Salon Employers" |
| Salon Owners United | "Salon Owners United" |
| Freelance Hairdressers Association | "FHA"; "Freelance Hairdress…" |
| British Hair Consortium | "BHC"; "British Hair Consortium" |
| Habia | "Habia" |
| Keywords | Any word beginning "hair" or "beaut", to catch anything the organisation terms missed |
The keyword search deliberately over-includes: it picks up Boots, Sephora and Estée Lauder where "beauty" appears in the purpose line. Those rows are retained in the workbook, flagged, and excluded from the organisation counts below. Roundtable attendee lists were split on commas and semicolons and names normalised, so "Hair and Beauty Federation" and "National Hair & Beauty Federation" are one organisation. The workbook has one row per matching meeting and one column per organisation.
Coverage
| Department | Quarters | Period | Recorded meetings | Sector meetings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Department for Business and Trade | 13 | Feb 2023 – Mar 2026 (complete: the department's first return) | 4,531 | 30 |
| HM Treasury | 17 | Jan 2021 – Mar 2026 (four quarters unpublished) | 2,749 | 3 |
| Department for Education | 6 | Oct 2024 – Mar 2026 (all that is published) | 999 | 0 |
| Department of Health and Social Care | 13 | Jan 2023 – Mar 2026 (complete) | 2,242 | 1 |
| Total | 49 | 10,521 | 34 |
"Recorded meetings" counts rows in the published returns after removing nil returns and blank lines. "Sector meetings" counts rows matching any organisation or keyword term, including keyword-only matches.
Which Organisations Met Ministers
| Organisation | DBT | HM Treasury | DfE | DHSC | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Beauty Council | 15 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 17 |
| National Hair & Beauty Federation | 12 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 13 |
| Hairdressing Council / Hair and Barber Council | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| BABTAC | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Salon Employers Association | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Salon Owners United | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Freelance Hairdressers Association | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| British Hair Consortium | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Habia | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Three things stand out. The British Beauty Council is the only organisation any department outside DBT has met, other than single meetings with NHBF and the Hair and Barber Council at the Treasury, and the only one to appear in three departments; its 17 appearances span both governments and seven ministers. Second, the five organisations with any presence appear overwhelmingly together: of NHBF's 12 DBT meetings, seven are roundtables at which the British Beauty Council, the Hairdressing Council and BABTAC were also present. Third, four organisations that describe themselves as representing the sector — and which together now form the British Hair Consortium coalition — have no recorded ministerial contact in any department over the entire period.
The Personal Care Sector Roundtables
Most of the sector's ministerial contact takes one form: a "personal care sector roundtable" convened by the DBT minister responsible for small business. Five have been held with a multi-body attendee list. Attendance, normalised from the returns, is set out below.
| Attendee | 3 Jul 2023 Hollinrake | 22 Apr 2024 Hollinrake | 19 Nov 2024 Thomas | 3 Jul 2025 Thomas | 17 Dec 2025 Dearden | Of 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Beauty Council | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | 5 |
| National Hair & Beauty Federation | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | 5 |
| Hairdressing Council | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | 5 |
| BABTAC | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | 5 |
| UK Spa Association | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | 5 |
| Hair and Beauty Suppliers Association | ● | ● | ● | ● | 4 | |
| L'Oréal UK and Ireland | ● | ● | ● | 3 | ||
| Josh Wood Colour | ● | ● | ● | 3 | ||
| Adam Reed Salon | ● | ● | 2 | |||
| Dermalogica | ● | ● | 2 | |||
| Headmasters Salon Group | ● | ● | 2 | |||
| Hunter Collective | ● | ● | 2 | |||
| Re:New Beauty | ● | ● | 2 | |||
| Salon Employers Association | ● | 1 | ||||
| Electric Hair, Federation of Holistic Therapists, KH Hair, Pall Mall Barbers, Treatwell, Urban | one each | 1 | ||||
The core is fixed: five organisations, present at every roundtable, across three ministers and a change of government. The Hair and Beauty Suppliers Association makes four of five. Beyond that the list is brands and named salons. The Salon Employers Association attended the first roundtable and none since. Salon Owners United, the Freelance Hairdressers Association, Habia and the British Hair Consortium itself have never been invited, or if invited have never attended — the returns cannot distinguish the two.
The stated purposes are also informative. The April 2024 roundtable was held "to discuss apprenticeships, recruitment and illegal working across the personal care sector as well as a lack of regulation regarding non-surgical procedures." The December 2025 roundtable covered "business rates, apprenticeships and skills, rising costs, regulation and employment challenges." No purpose line at any roundtable refers to self-employment, chair rental, freelance working or the VAT registration threshold.
Representation
Who the five core organisations represent is a matter of public record. The British Beauty Council's membership is drawn from beauty brands, manufacturers and retailers. NHBF represents salon and barbershop owners, principally employers. BABTAC represents beauty therapists. The Hairdressing Council administers the voluntary register created by the Hairdressers (Registration) Act 1964. The UK Spa Association represents spa operators.
HMRC's tax-return data puts the sector's self-employed at around 210,000, against 186,000 PAYE employees (see the business data archive). The only organisation in the period whose stated purpose is to represent freelance and self-employed hairdressers — the Freelance Hairdressers Association — has no recorded ministerial contact in any department.
The majority of the workforce has never had a seat
Across five roundtables at which the sector's concerns were put to ministers, no organisation representing the self-employed — the larger part of the sector's workforce on HMRC's own count — was in the room.
Skills: the Department for Education
DfE owns apprenticeship policy, the Growth and Skills Levy and Skills England. The sector's most persistent public complaint, from every organisation on both sides of its internal divisions, is the collapse in apprenticeship starts — from 16,080 hairdressing and barbering starts in 2015/16 to 5,250 in 2024/25.
In the six DfE returns published to date, covering roughly a thousand ministerial meetings from October 2024 to March 2026, no hair or beauty organisation appears. The Skills Minister's recorded meetings on apprenticeships in that period include the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders and twenty automotive brands, Morgan Motors, the CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Retail Consortium, Multiverse, Microsoft, Amazon and a series of universities and colleges. The sector that says apprenticeships are its existential problem has no recorded meeting with the minister responsible for them.
The two DBT roundtables that list apprenticeships among their purposes were held with a department that does not set apprenticeship policy.
Licensing: the Department of Health and Social Care
DHSC owns the licensing scheme for non-surgical cosmetic procedures created by the Health and Care Act 2022. Across 13 quarters and 2,242 recorded DHSC ministerial meetings, one involved the sector: a roundtable on 14 June 2023 convened by Maria Caulfield "to discuss the licensing scheme for non-surgical cosmetic procedures." The attendees were the Joint Council for Cosmetic Practitioners, Save Face, the Professional Standards Authority, the GMC, NMC, GDC, GPhC, HCPC and CQC, two local authorities, the British College of Aesthetic Medicine, the British Association of Cosmetic Nurses — and, as the only beauty-industry trade body, the British Beauty Council. BABTAC, whose members deliver a large share of the treatments the scheme would license, was not present. There has been no recorded DHSC ministerial engagement with the sector since the July 2024 election.
Tax: HM Treasury
Across 17 published Treasury quarters, three sector meetings are recorded: the Chancellor speaking at the British Beauty Council's British Beauty Week in September 2021; a Treasury minister meeting the Hair and Barber Council on 21 March 2024 "to discuss sector concerns with VAT"; and the Exchequer Secretary meeting NHBF on 3 July 2025 to discuss its "Straightening out the costs" report. The British Hair Consortium, which has campaigned on VAT since 2024 and describes itself as the sector's single voice on the subject, has no recorded Treasury meeting. Four Treasury quarters remain unpublished, including the two either side of the October 2024 Budget.
What This Does and Does Not Show
It shows that, at ministerial level, the sector's access to government runs through a fixed group of five organisations selected by DBT officials in 2023 and carried over unchanged after the election; that the group is weighted towards brands, employers and a voluntary register; and that the departments responsible for the sector's two most-cited problems, skills and licensing, have had no or almost no ministerial contact with it. It shows that the organisations now presenting themselves as a rival "one voice" for the industry have never, on the published record, been in a room with a minister.
It does not show why. The returns record attendance, not invitations, and cannot say whether an organisation was excluded, declined, or never asked.
The next step
A Freedom of Information request to DBT for the invitation lists and selection criteria for each personal care sector roundtable since July 2023, and for any correspondence about adding or removing organisations from those lists, would answer the question the returns cannot.
Conclusion
Ten and a half thousand ministerial meetings across four departments and five years contain thirty-four with the hair and beauty sector. Thirty of those are at one department. Five organisations account for nearly all of them, and the same five have sat at every sector roundtable held since 2023. Four organisations that describe themselves as representing the industry have never appeared, and the only body for the self-employed majority is one of them.
The department that owns apprenticeships has never met the sector. The department that owns licensing met it once, three years ago. The department the sector does meet does not own either problem.
Whoever speaks for the industry, on the published record it is the same five voices, chosen once, and never revisited.
Source Documents
- Ministerial meetings transparency returns — DBT (13), HM Treasury (17), DfE (6), DHSC (13), as published on gov.uk, with the analysis workbook
- HMRC PAYE RTI and Survey of Personal Incomes, SIC 96020, via FOI
- DfE apprenticeship starts, standards ST0213/ST0214/ST1273 and legacy frameworks
Every count in this article can be reproduced from the published returns using the search terms in the Method section. Corrections: analysis@salonlogicpro.co.uk