Adjudicator panel

Last updated: 9 May 2026

Decisions at adjudication are made by experienced practitioners from the medical aesthetics sector — people who actually understand the treatments — sitting as independent adjudicators trained in consumer ADR.

Who sits on the panel

The panel is built around practising and recently practising clinicians with direct, hands-on understanding of medical aesthetic and cosmetic surgery treatments. This may include:

• Doctors, nurses, dentists, prescribing pharmacists and surgeons with current or recent practice in private medical aesthetics or cosmetic surgery.
• Senior clinicians with experience training others in the sector or contributing to professional standards.
• Suitably experienced practitioners drawn from voluntary registers (such as JCCP-registered practitioners) or professional bodies (BAAPS, BAPRAS, BCAM and equivalents).

This is the deliberate opposite of a panel composed of generalist legal professionals. Disputes about medical aesthetic services turn on what was promised, what was delivered, what is reasonable for the treatment in question, and what redress is appropriate. Those judgements are best made by people who understand the treatments at first hand.

Why practitioners, not solicitors

• Sector knowledge by default. A panel member can read a treatment plan, a consent form, before-and-after photos and clinical notes and understand them without needing them re-explained.
• Realistic expectations. They know what a typical outcome looks like for a given procedure, what reasonable post-treatment care entails, and where a complaint is well-founded versus where it reflects a misunderstanding of the treatment.
• Faster, fairer decisions. Less translation between expert evidence and decision-maker. The decision-maker is the expert.
• Sector accountability. Decisions written by practitioners, for the sector, set norms that practitioners can act on.

Where a particular case raises a discrete question of law, the panel can draw on a small bench of legally-qualified ADR specialists for advice — but the decision remains the practitioner-adjudicator’s.

What practitioner-adjudicators do not decide

• They do not decide clinical negligence or personal injury damages — those remain matters for the courts. Practitioner expertise here is used to understand evidence in a contract and consumer-law dispute, not to substitute for a clinical-negligence determination.
• They do not act as professional regulators. Conduct issues are for the GMC, NMC, GDC, GPhC or equivalent.
• They do not decide cases involving their own clinic, employer, training relationships or any other actual, potential or perceived conflict (see independence and governance).

Appointment

Adjudicators are appointed by the AR-ADR Board following an application and assessment process. Appointments are made on merit, against published criteria, and without regard to the interests of any participating clinic or trader. The aim is a panel that is both sector-credible and independent.

Terms

• Fixed-term appointments, typically three to five years, renewable.
• Adjudicators are paid a fixed fee per case. Pay is not contingent on outcome.
• Adjudicators are not employees of any participating trader and must not have provided paid services to a trader party in the recent past — disclosure rules apply.

Training

Sector experience is the starting point — not the whole picture. Every panel member completes a structured induction programme of approximately 20 hours, combining taught content, written assessment and a practical assignment. It is currently going through formal CPD accreditation.

The curriculum covers the topics that turn a clinician into a competent ADR adjudicator:

• AR-ADR scheme rules, procedure and decision-writing on a durable medium.
• Consumer law as it applies to medical aesthetic and cosmetic surgery contracts — Consumer Rights Act 2015 (sections 49, 50, 54–56), Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, and related authorities.
• The boundary between consumer ADR, clinical negligence and professional regulation — when to decide, when to signpost.
• Evidence handling, including how to weigh contemporaneous clinical records against later accounts.
• Equality, accessibility and reasonable adjustments.
• Identification and management of actual, potential and perceived conflicts.

Assessment is by exam and by a written assignment in which the trainee adjudicator decides a worked case file under supervision. A panel member is not allocated to live cases until they have passed both.

Continuing professional development is required annually, including refreshers on consumer-law developments and on new procedure types entering the market.

Removal

The Board may remove a panel member for misconduct, persistent failure to meet quality standards, conflict of interest that cannot be managed, or loss of the underlying clinical or professional registration that supports their appointment.

Allocation of cases

Cases are allocated by AR-ADR’s case management team according to availability, relevant treatment expertise and conflict checks. Where a case concerns a procedure type, an adjudicator with experience of that procedure is preferred. Parties cannot choose their adjudicator, but they may object on properly substantiated grounds of bias.