There is currently no law in the UK directly stopping companies from refusing to recruit people based upon their appearance, so long as they do not breach existing discrimination laws covering race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or belief, disability, age, union membership or spent criminal convictions.
In effect, this means that employers do have a range of preferential criteria, which they can apply to would-be staff, providing they can successfully argue that these are genuine occupational requirements. For example, it could be legal for an airline to specify that they wanted to recruit cabin staff with a pleasant/presentable appearance, providing these requirements applied equally to men and women doing the same job.
However, no employer is legally allowed to ignore applications from people with a disfigurement, who are able to do the job in question, as this would contravene disability discrimination legislation.
