Models are set to be barred from London Fashion Week next year unless they can provide a medical certificate from an eating disorder specialist attesting their good health.

In addition, no models will be allowed to take part until they are over the age of 16, and regular drugs testing will take place backstage, after a report today called for serious action to protect models’ health in the wake of a series of eating disorder scandals.

However those who hoped to see a curvier breed of model strutting the catwalks at this year’s upcoming event will be disappointed, as the Model Health Inquiry shied away from an outright ban on ultra-skinny women.

Although the panel – set up by organisers the British Fashion Council - recommended that models be screened for eating disorders, it stopped short of barring girls with a Body Mass Index under a certain level from participating.

Expert View

BMI, like dress sizes, as any woman who has found herself a size 12 in Topshop and an 8 in Marks and Spencer appreciates, is not an absolute indicator of health

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Instead, from September 2008, models will be required to provide a medical certificate guaranteeing that they are not anorexic or bulimic, from an accredited list of specialists.

The panel, including Sarah Doukas, the founder of the Storm model agency who discovered supermodel Kate Moss, designer Giles Deacon, model Erin O’Connor and a top expert on eating disorders, acknowledged that there was a high incidence of eating disorders in the fashion industry and that the phenomenon could be spilling over into wider society.

"Widespread use of unhealthily thin models feeds criticism that the fashion industry is fuelling an unhealthy obsession with thinness and dieting in the wider population," it added.

Models aged between 16 and 18 will require a chaperone, while healthy snacks will be provided backstage at shows, and regular drug testing implemented.

The ban on underage models was widely welcomed, as was a proposal to require a chaperone for all models aged between 16 and 18. In recent years the use of extremely young girls, some as young as 13, has increasingly prompted allegations of exploitation, while the idolisation of, in some cases, pre-pubescent female bodies has been blamed for encouraging the trend towards extreme thinness.

Jonathan Phang, industry expert and a judge on America's Next Top Model, welcomed the move to ban under-sixteens as "a positive move."

"I don't think people should be working so hard under the age of 16 in such an intense environment," Mr Phang, who also works as a columnist for the Videojug website, told Times Online.

But elsewhere there were complaints that the inquiry had failed to take the steps necessary to revolutionise attitudes towards the female form.

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