2024-25 archived consultation: GOC business regulation

This consultation was previously hosted on our consultation hub. We have moved it here as part of archiving.

We asked 

In 2022 we carried out a call for evidence which confirmed there was strong stakeholder support for extending business regulation to all businesses carrying out restricted functions. In our 2023 response to the consultation we said that we would develop proposals and consult on an updated framework for business regulation.  

This consultation sought views on changes to our framework for regulating businesses under four areas: 

  • scope of regulation; 

  • models of regulatory assurance; 

  • enforcement approach and sanctions; and 

  • consumer redress. 

You said 

We received 99 written consultation responses from a range of stakeholders including optometrists, dispensing opticians, students and representative bodies. We also commissioned Impact Health to obtain views from patients and the public. The findings can be summarised as follows: 

  • support for keeping the scope of regulation wide (including university eye care clinics and charities) and consistent; 

  • support for all businesses to have a head of optical practice and the proposed responsibilities, that the post-holder should be a registrant and employee, with differing views around whether a person should have the role for more than one business and whether the role should be included on the individual and/or business register; 

  • support for linking the financial penalty in fitness to practise cases to turnover, and having a power to visit as part of the fitness to practise process;  

  • support for making it mandatory for business registrants to participate in a consumer redress scheme, with mixed views about whether the outcome should be legally binding; and 

  • support for the proposal to continue with our current model of delivering the consumer redress scheme i.e. a single provider through a competition for the market model, and support for every business contributing to the consumer redress scheme through the registration fee. 

The full findings can be seen in the GOC response and research documents under 'Related documents' below.  

We did 

Our proposals for going forward are set out in the executive summary of our ‘GOC response to business regulation consultation’ which can be accessed in 'Related documents' below. 

Related documents 

Published responses

View submitted responses where consent has been given to publish the response. We have redacted responses in line with our consultation policy.

Original consultation

What we're doing 

This consultation seeks views on changes to our framework for regulating businesses. Section 9 of the Opticians Act 1989 (‘the Act’) provides for the GOC to register bodies corporate that meet certain eligibility requirements (including around its directors’ registration and the nature of its activities). Under section 28 of the Act, it is an offence for an unregistered business to use a title, addition or description that falsely implies GOC registration, i.e. GOC registration is mandatory for bodies corporate using a protected title. 

Our current system results in an inconsistent application of our regulatory powers for businesses and our research estimates that around half of all optical businesses are not required, or able, to register with the GOC. Where we refer to businesses in this consultation, we are referring to all providers of optical services, including those that may not be considered traditional optical businesses e.g. university eye clinics and charities.

Why we're doing this now 

Should the Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) legislative reform programme proceed, we will use this opportunity to update our legislation and the aspects of the Act that apply only to the optical sector. The review of our legislation began in our 2022 call for evidence on the Opticians Act 1989 and associated GOC policies which we said was a first step in a programme of work to ensure that our legislation and associated policies were fit for the future.

As part of the 2022 call for evidence, we revisited the area of business regulation and commissioned further research from Europe Economics entitled Mapping of Optical Businesses. The consultation confirmed there was strong stakeholder support for extending business regulation to all businesses carrying out restricted functions. In our 2023 response to the consultation we said that we would develop proposals and consult on an updated framework for business regulation.

What will happen next

The public consultation will be open for 13 weeks.

Once the consultation has closed, we will analyse all the comments we have received and identify how to progress our proposals for business regulation. We will produce a document summarising the responses we receive to the consultation and how we propose the new framework of business regulation will work. We will ask our Council to approve this document prior to publication.

Although we are leading engagement with stakeholders and the sector through this consultation, responsibility for agreeing changes to the Act does not rest with us but with Parliament, and the pace and outcome of any changes sought to business regulation will be determined by the UK Government.

You can find below both PDF and Microsoft Word versions of the consultation document and draft equality impact assessment, in the English and Welsh languages. We recommend you read these documents prior to completing the survey:

If you have any questions about the consultation, please email our consultation mailbox at [email protected].