Cosmetic Surgery Certification

To register for the scheme, follow these simple steps:

• check your eligibility and register for certification: www.certify-cosmeticsurgery.org.uk;
• select the traditional route or the established practitioner route;
• pay your application fee for certification which is £650.

How evidence is assessed: 

• An evaluation team will review your evidence.
• We will contact you if the evaluation team requires clarification or further evidence. In some circumstances, the team may arrange to discuss your application via a Microsoft Teams meeting.
• We will send an email regarding the outcome of your application.

Certification guidelines:

All applicants must complete the PBAS course. This is a mandatory requirement of the scheme. This component of the scheme is £475.

The Royal College of Surgeons of England developed the course in collaboration with the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons and the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons. 

Once you have submitted your application, we will review it and send an initial response usually within 28 working days.

There are nine areas in surgery that are available for certification:

To apply for certification, surgeons must be on the GMC/IMC specialist register in a specialty that demonstrates training and experience in the chosen area of practice. Surgeons can apply for certification in one or more groups of closely related cosmetic surgical procedures.

Certification validity:

• If you are a UK applicant, certification is only valid for working in the UK.
• If you are a Republic of Ireland applicant, certification is only valid for working in the Republic of Ireland.

Certificates only apply to the jurisdiction for which they are issued and are not interchangeable. To apply for certification in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, both sets of criteria will need to be fulfilled. To facilitate this, we have categorised procedures anatomically into groups of closely related operations. Further information is available in the certification guidelines.

We recognise the high level of surgical training already proven by individuals with a relevant Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) or Completion of Core Surgical Training (CCST) and that surgeons will have been introduced to many of the skills required to perform cosmetic surgery during surgical training. However, as there are complex issues for cosmetic surgery in the private sector, surgeons will need to provide additional information over and above the CCT/CCST or equivalent to gain certification.

The system builds primarily on existing training and regulatory frameworks and evidence, which are, for the most part, already collected.

To obtain certification, surgeons will need to provide evidence of the following:

Certification is voluntary, but we expect all eligible surgeons who want to carry out cosmetic surgery in the private sector to certify so they can demonstrate high professional and clinical standards in their area of practice.

You should:

• include evidence of your cosmetic practice in your next appraisal discussion;
• familiarise yourself with your and your provider’s obligations under the CMA's requirements in relation to information about performance and submit your data in line with local governance arrangements; 
• ensure that your indemnity insurance covers your cosmetic practice in the UK/Republic of Ireland.

The application for the Cosmetic Surgery Certification Scheme costs £650, and the Professional Behaviours in Aesthetic Surgery (PBAS) course costs £475. Applicants must complete both the application and the PBAS course to be certified. Please email us for further details.

Applicants must apply for renewal every five years. The date of the first renewal will be set at the point of successful certification.

Applicants will not have to repeat the original certification process or re-submit the same portfolio of evidence to maintain certification. They will be required to confirm that their details have not changed and that they continue to comply with the order of the Competition and Markets Authority for the collection and publication of clinical outcomes data. They will also be required to confirm that they have been contributing evidence about their cosmetic practice to their annual appraisal discussion as part of the existing requirement for whole practice appraisal for the purposes of revalidation. This includes relevant Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activities about clinical and professional aspects of their practice, multi-source feedback and a regular audit of outcomes data.

Please be advised that if you wish to apply for additional/new certificate(s), you will be required to complete the Operation Numbers Credit Counter spreadsheet and complete the relevant tabs for the additional/new certificate(s) that you wish to include in your application for re-certification.

To apply for re-certification, please complete your application by selecting 're-certification application' once you have logged into your account via the Cosmetic Surgery Certification website.

The re-certification application fee is £250.