Setting up your first beauty salon: the documents that protect you from day one

A new UK beauty salon needs a surprisingly small set of business documents to operate properly. Most owners overcomplicate the early paperwork or, more commonly, undercomplicate it and then wish they hadn't.

The set below is the minimum that protects a salon from the disputes, complaints, and compliance questions that actually happen in the first year. It isn't a "future readiness" stack. It's the working paperwork the salon needs before the first client books in.