GOC business regulation consultation

Our findings and response to our 2024-25 consultation on regulation of optical businesses

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

Visit our consultation hub to view the original consultation.