For almost ten years now, legislation of the indoor tanning market has been an ongoing scenario in the UK. What I find interesting is that England has a strong commitment to self-regulation, demonstrated by the percentage of membership numbers in the UK’s trade association – The Sunbed Association – with the lowest level of regulation legislation.
Scotland was the first country within the UK to introduce indoor tanning legislation back in December 2009, followed by England and Wales in April 2011 (Wales strengthened the scope of their legislation in 2012) and Northern Ireland introduced legislation earlier this year.
Each time legislation has been introduced by the individual countries that make up our United Kingdom, they have enhanced the requirements, although disappointingly left out some of the key areas that the industry believes would ensure a more professional approach by all salon operators, not just those signed up to voluntary regulation.
Of course, once legislation is in place, it isn’t an option – operators have to comply with the law. Good operators want to ensure they are operating to best practice, so, on the whole, have readily embraced justified legislation when introduced.
[callout]These changes to the law will not impede our industry, but enable the market to flourish with confidence and professionalism.[/callout]Earlier this year, I was at the House of Commons as part of an evidence-gathering procedure undertaken by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Skin (APPGoS). From this, the APPGoS compiled a report containing recommendations for Members of Parliament to consider and agree to include into legislation. I was delighted that just about all of our recommendations were included in the report. One key omission, which to this day I really don’t understand, was the exclusion of our recommendation that all staff working with tanning beds should be properly trained.
Following the publication of the report, there was much excitement and indeed a great impetus to “get things done.” Even though the anti-tanning lobby were attempting to claim these developments as their success, we were right in the thick of all the action, ensuring our voice was being heard.
Since then, eight months have passed and, unfortunately, there still hasn’t been an official response to the report. Of course, this is disappointing, not least because we have a General Election here in the UK in eight months’ time, so in the very near future that is all that our MPs will be focussed on.
This is not to say that we will not achieve the goal of having secondary legislation introduced before the next General Election. There is still time because the process to introduce secondary legislation is much more straightforward and far less time-consuming than the process for passing primary legislation.
I have to admit, it is somewhat disconcerting to find myself on the same page as my regular day-to-day adversaries, as we all lobby (albeit independent from each other) for the enhanced and sensible legislation that will help to vanquish rogue salons.
For those who wonder why I would be in favour of enhanced legislation for indoor tanning businesses, the answer is really quite simple. Barring the interpretation and agreement of one element, all of the proposed recommendations for legislation either exist in The Sunbed Association’s Code of Practice, which has been in situ for 20 years, or, in the case of maximum UV emission levels, is an issue on which we have been lobbying for years.
These changes to the law will not impede our industry; quite the opposite. They will flush out the operators who run their salons poorly and discredit our industry, enabling the market to flourish with confidence and professionalism. ■
