We checked six UK agencies that sell specifically to aesthetic clinics, in July 2026. On the pages we could reach, not one of them mentioned the CAP Code, the ASA or the MHRA anywhere.
That silence is the reason this page exists — because in this sector the advertising rules decide what a treatment page is allowed to say at all.
The rule on prescription-only medicines
A prescription-only medicine cannot be advertised to the public in the United Kingdom. Not on a treatment page, not in an FAQ, not in a photo caption, and not in a social post linking back to any of them. The ASA enforces it, and rulings are published under the clinic's own name. (A price list is a narrow, conditional carve-out — the next section is about exactly that.)
Two things make this harder than it first sounds.
Indirect references count. Swapping the brand name for a softer phrase does not by itself solve the problem. CAP's Bitesize guidance tells clinics not to use indirect references to the medicine, softer phrases and hashtags included. The substitution is the obvious move, which is why it is worth knowing that it may not work.
What is permitted is the consultation, not the treatment. You may advertise a consultation for the concern a patient wants addressed. That is a genuinely workable commercial position — it is simply a different website to one built around the treatments themselves.
Notice what this page does not do. We have written several hundred words about the advertising rules for injectable treatments without naming a single medicine. That is not squeamishness — it is our own house standard, applied to our own marketing and to any client site we build. In places it is stricter than the regulators' guidance, by choice.
This is an architecture problem, not only a copywriting one
Here is the reason a rewrite alone may not fix your site.
A price list covering a prescription-only treatment may be acceptable, and the guidance describes the route in structural terms. CAP's FAQ of 23 January 2020 says a price on the homepage, or a direct link to "Prices" that mentions the medicine, "is unlikely to be acceptable", while a price list "might be acceptable" if clients "can only get to the price list after going through a page promoting a consultation". CAP's Bitesize guidance describes the same journey: the consultation advertised on the homepage, a page about the consultation, and from there a further page "ideally two clicks from the homepage". The reference to the medicine must be "purely informational with no promotional content".
Read that as a specification rather than a warning. On our reading it describes a navigation hierarchy, an internal linking pattern, a sitemap and a set of page templates. It is a build brief.
Which is why changing a few words on your existing site may not get you there. If a page about the medicine can be reached straight from the main menu, without passing through the consultation, the structure itself is the problem, and no amount of careful phrasing fixes a menu.
Consultation-first architecture
This is the pattern we build, designed so that a compliant clinic site can still perform:
- Concern-led entry pages. The product name is what the rules put out of reach, whatever volume sits behind it. The concern and the consultation are what you are permitted to compete on, so they are what the structure has to earn traffic with.
- A consultation-first path. The route to any detailed treatment information runs through consultation content, built to the route CAP's guidance describes rather than around it.
- Clean primary navigation. Our design choice, not a quoted rule: nothing that names the medicine appears in the main menu, and the internal links agree — a page kept out of the menu while every other page links straight to it is not really being reached through the consultation path.
- Enquiry capture that survives the restructure. Booking, intake, reminders and follow-up run through your CRM, so a more careful site does not become a quieter one.
What we build
- The website. Mobile-first, built in Next.js. Page size is checked automatically as the site is built, while load time is written against a two-second target and judged on field data, since a throttled build server is not the phone your patient is holding. That distinction matters here, because clinic pages are image-led.
- Booking and CRM automation. Enquiry to booked, confirmed and reminded appointment without your front desk retyping anything. We lead with GoHighLevel, and use HubSpot where it is the better fit.
- Missed-call recovery. You are with a patient, the phone rings, and the caller may book elsewhere. A voice agent can answer the calls you miss, book into your calendar, and text a link to a caller it cannot fully help.
- Local SEO. Technical foundations, concern and location pages mapped to real UK search demand, and a review flow through your CRM. It compounds over months — anyone promising the top position next month is best avoided.
The proposed licensing scheme, stated accurately
As at 28 September 2026 the proposed licensing scheme for non-surgical cosmetic procedures in England is not in force, and we found no licensing regulations made under the power in section 180 of the Health and Care Act 2022. The Government's consultation response of 7 August 2025, on 11,848 responses, says "further work is required to determine where specific procedures will sit in the proposed tiering system". On 8 December 2025 the Government said it was "taking forward work to determine which procedures will be included" and "what requirements will have to be met in order to be granted a licence".
What is already in force is the 2021 Act (2021 c. 19), which covers filler injections for a cosmetic purpose and one named prescription-only medicine. Since 1 October 2021 it has been an offence to administer either to a person under 18 in England. There are defences, including for registered medical practitioners and for regulated health professionals acting on a doctor's directions, and the penalty is a fine on summary conviction.
We date these claims because regulatory content that quietly goes stale is worse than none at all — it inverts the entire reason you would trust the agency that wrote it.
What we are not
We are not solicitors, and the distinction matters. We are a web and automation studio that has read the rules properly and builds sites that respect them. Where advertising copy sits genuinely close to the line, our standard is to put it to CAP's Copy Advice service — free, non-binding, and considerably better than guessing on your behalf.
We also will not tell you that a compliant site is a commercial disadvantage. A clinic in breach can be one complaint away from a published ruling with its name on it. Being the clinic that built it properly is worth more than the handful of keywords it costs.
Where to next
Start with a free audit: five prioritised findings on search, speed and conversion, recorded as a walkthrough of your own pages. On a clinic site that includes where it sits relative to the advertising rules and what the structural fix would involve. No obligation, and the findings are yours either way.
Our guides set out the rules in more detail, each quoting its sources with dates: the advertising rules for prescription-only medicines, how a price list for a prescription-only treatment can be structured, what an aesthetic clinic can say in adverts and a page-by-page checklist for clinic websites.