Straight answer
What a CPD certificate actually means
A CPD certificate records verified continuing professional development — the hours you have put in to stay current. It is what an insurer, a landlord or an employer wants to see you keep doing. It is not a licence to practise and it does not replace a practical qualification. Where a treatment needs hands-on assessment or a local authority licence, we say so on the course page, before you pay.
The hair and beauty trade is full of courses sold on an implication that is never quite stated out loud: that a day online will let you offer a treatment you are not currently qualified or insured to do. It will not, and the gap between what those courses imply and what they deliver is where people get hurt — the practitioner who finds out at claim stage that their policy never covered it, and the client in the chair.
So what is CPD?
Continuing professional development is the ongoing learning you do after you qualify, to stay current in a trade that changes. Bond builders, lamination chemistry, HEMA sensitisation, Making Tax Digital — none of that was in anybody’s Level 2. CPD is how you keep up, and a CPD certificate is the evidence that you did.
That evidence matters in three practical places: your insurer, who increasingly wants to see ongoing training against the treatments on your policy; an employer or salon owner deciding what you are trusted to do; and a local authority or landlord assessing you.
What it is not
It is not a qualification, and it is not a licence. A qualification — NVQ, VTCT, City & Guilds — is assessed practically, in person, by an awarding body. A licence, for the treatments that need one, is granted by your local authority against their own criteria. Neither of those can be issued by an online course, and any provider suggesting otherwise is one you should walk away from.
Which treatments need more than CPD
Anything that pierces the skin is regulated. Semi-permanent make-up, microblading and lip blush normally require registration or licensing of both the practitioner and the premises, and the detail differs by nation and by council — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each do it differently. Tattooing anybody under 18 is a criminal offence. We do not teach those treatments. Where a course we do run touches a licensable procedure, the course page says so in a box above the buy button rather than in the small print, and tells you to confirm your own position with your local authority’s environmental health team.
How we handle it
- Every course states its prerequisite. If a course assumes you already hold a practical qualification, that appears above the price, before you pay.
- Every certificate states its hours and its scope. It records what you completed. It does not claim to be anything else.
- Every certificate is verifiable. Anyone you show it to can confirm it is genuine at https://hairandbeautytraining.com/verify.
- We say no. Where an online course cannot responsibly cover something, the course page says so rather than implying otherwise.