British Beauty Council chairs new cross-industry UV Safety Coalition

The British Beauty Council has established a cross-industry UV Safety Coalition to take forward recommendations from a parliamentary report calling for coordinated action on UV-related harm in the UK.

The Council will lead the cross-industry group, which includes beauty brands, retailers, charities, academics, industry organisations and people with lived experience of skin cancer. Its progress will be fed back to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Beauty, Hair & Wellbeing.

According to the British Beauty Council, four task forces will focus on education, digital messaging and misinformation, brands and retail, and public health communications.

Parliamentary report prompts industry action

The launch of the coalition follows the publication of a report, called 'A Preventable Crisis: The Case for a National UV Safety Strategy', which was based on a year-long APPG inquiry chaired by Carolyn Harris MP.

As previously reported by TheIndustry.beauty, the report said more than seven lives are lost to melanoma each day in the UK. It also found that 86% of melanoma cases and 90% of non-melanoma skin cancers are considered preventable, while treatment costs the NHS an estimated £750 million annually.

The report recommended mandatory UV safety education in schools, lower VAT on SPF30+ sunscreen, stronger rules around sunbeds and greater protection for outdoor workers. It also called for a sustained national public health campaign to move sun protection beyond seasonal and holiday messaging.

Four task forces set initial targets

The Education task force will reassess existing UV safety teaching in primary and secondary schools before developing unified materials. The APPG also wants to implement recommendations from the UV Safety Report, which would see a standardised delivery of mandatory UV safety education in primary and secondary schools, including teaching children to correctly apply sunscreen.

A Digital Messaging and Misinformation task force will address misleading tanning advice and claims that create fear around sunscreen ingredients. It plans to develop ‘best practice’ guidance for dealing with social media messaging – both by brands and content creators.

Meanwhile the Brands and Retail Taskforce looks to tackle the numerous hurdles to wider sun protection use, the most pressing one being affordability. The APPG's report highlighted that 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 task force will also develop an industry pledge that the savings from a VAT cut will be passed on to consumers.

To make suncare more affordable for customers, Superdrug announced in May that it was reducing prices across its own-brand Solait suncare range. More than 25 SKUs in the Solait range have seen price cuts, with several products now starting from £4.

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.

Last month the UK suncare market show strong growth, as daily SPF use drove double-digit growth, according to data from Circana. Total retail sales across all UK outlets, including chemists and health and beauty retailers, reached £444.9 million in the 52 weeks to 25 April 2026. This represented a 10% year-on-year increase and a 17% rise compared with two years earlier.

The category's growth has been driven in part by warmer weather, which has boosted demand for suncare products.