The Carlton Institute to be placed into liquidation: advice for students

Above: The Carlton Institue's Windsor school

Awarding body VTCT has pledged to help students of The Carlton Institute as the beauty school group is placed into liquidation.

The Carlton Institute, which has 11 schools in the UK, ceased trading earlier this month. Liquidator Leonard Curtis has been appointed and confirmed the company is due to be placed into liquidation but declined to comment on what students should do next. Directors of The Carlton Institute were unavailable for comment.

VTCT is the awarding body for many of The Carlton Institute’s courses and has pledged to help students transfer their courses to new centres.

VTCT chief executive Stephen Vickers told Professional Beauty, “We accept we have a moral and financial duty to all students registered with us and we have a network of centres that have agreed to help.”

However, he said the initial challenge would be identifying and notifying all the students. The Carlton Institute, he said, had agreed to hand over all the student portfolios they had in the office, but this only amounted to 60.

“They also admitted that only about a third of the students they put on VTCT courses had been registered with us,” added Vickers. “So there are two third of their students – minus the ones we have portfolios for – that we are trying to trace, and we are anxious to hear from them.”

The students that The Carlton Institute had registered with VTCT will be directly transferred to a new centre without charge. However, those that the Institute did not register are likely to be required to pay again to re-register.

Vickers added: “We do want to make it clear to students that they may have paid upfront tuition fees to The Carlton Institute but only about £60 or £70 of that comes to VTCT for registration.”

VTCT has called for all students of The Carlton Institute to contact them via [email protected] with the subject line Carlton Student.

Vickers said VTCT was also happy to advise any students of the Institute who were studying a non-VTCT course. “We are a charity and will help anyone we can. We understand this is a hard situation because people may have spent all the money they had to study with The Carlton Institute and can’t afford to start again.”

VTCT will also hold an open day for former Carlton Institute students to give further advice and support and we will update this story with the date and location as soon as it has been confirmed.

Sussex-based machines and skincare supplier The Carlton Group (also known as Carlton Beauty & Spa) has asked Professional Beauty to make it clear that it is in no way connected to The Carlton Institute and continues to trade as usual.