To begin the work towards implementing industry-specific recommendations, the UV Safety Coalition has been formally established with a broad representation of brands, retailers, charities, academics, industry organisations and individuals with lived experience of skin cancer.

The cross-industry group, chaired by the British Beauty Council, will now begin focussed workstreams to address the report’s recommendations and feed their progress back to the APPG.  

The task forces established for this important work include:

1. Education

The APPG’s UV Safety Report recommended a standardised delivery of mandatory UV safety education in primary and secondary schools, including teaching children to correctly apply sunscreen.

The Coalition’s Education task force will reevaluate existing primary and secondary school UV education offerings and work towards developing unified educational materials.

2. Digital Messaging and Misinformation

The report raised serious concerns about the levels of UV misinformation online, from  dubious tanning advice, to fearmongering about sunscreen ingredients.

The Coalition will feature a dedicated task force to tackle this issue. As part of this work, ‘best practice’ guidance will be developed for dealing with social media messaging – both by brands and content creators.

3. Brands and Retail

The APPG’s report highlighted numerous hurdles to wider sun protection use. Chief among these was affordability, with 64% of the British public saying sun protection is too expensive. To improve affordability, the report recommended cutting the VAT on SPF30+ sunscreen to 0% for children’s and 5% for adult products. The Brand and Retail task force of the Coalition will develop an industry pledge that the savings from a VAT cut will be passed on to consumers.

The report also highlighted how in-store messaging about sunscreen and the siloed positioning of sunscreen often apart from other skincare can reinforce the perception of it as a summer holiday-only product rather than essential personal care. In light of this, the Coalition will seek to address in-store and online messaging and the retail positioning of sunscreen products.

Finally, given the report’s recommendations about inclusivity, the Brands and Retail task force will analyse inclusivity concerns.

4. Public Health Messaging

One of the report’s key recommendations is the need for a consistent, unified national UV Safety campaign, such as Australia’s famed “Slip, Slap, Slop”. While this is a monumental task that cannot be done without government involvement, the Public Health Messaging task force will begin laying the foundations by developing 3-5 central messages around UV safety and building a UV safety communications campaign proposal.

Next steps

The British Beauty Council welcomes anyone who is passionate about UV safety and aligned with the report’s recommendations and the Coalition’s work programme, to join this industry effort to improve UV safety in the UK.

To find out more and express your interest in joining, contact the British Beauty Council’s Policy Executive, Mikhail Vtornikov, at mikhail@britishbeautycouncil.com.

To read the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Beauty, Hair and Wellbeing’s report ‘A Preventable Crisis: The Case for a National UV Safety Strategy’, click here.