2021-2022 Annual Report published

We have published our annual report for 2021-22, which highlights our achievements in meeting our strategic objectives of transforming customer service, delivering world-class regulatory practice, and developing a culture of continuous improvement.  

Highlights from the report include:  

Transforming customer service 

We worked with Enventure Research to carry out a registrant survey to gain an up-to-date understanding of their views and continue to support registrants in protecting patients and the public, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

We also commissioned M.E.L Research to carry out public perceptions research, which sought to understand the public’s views and experiences of opticians across the UK and how these change over time. We will use the findings from this research to inform our work in transforming customer service and future policy and research activities. 

To give registrants more confidence in speaking up when they need to, we consulted on new draft guidance which made our expectations clearer and published the final guidance in October 2021.  

Delivering world-class regulatory practice 

We are pleased to report that in the most recent assessment for 2020-21, we met 17 of 18 of the Professional Standards Authority’s (PSA) Standards of Good Regulation.  

As part of the Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) reform of healthcare regulators’ legislation, we responded to their consultation ‘regulating healthcare professionals, protecting the public’ and opened a call for evidence to gain information and evidence to inform the development of any business case for future change to the Opticians Act.  

Developing a culture of continuous improvement 

We introduced updated education and training requirements for the post-registration specialist qualifications for prescribing optometrists and contact lens opticians, which ensure the qualifications we approve in the future are responsive to a rapidly changing landscape in the commissioning of eye-care services and are fit for purpose in each of the devolved nations. 

We also introduced our new Continuing Professional Development (CPD) scheme, which replaced the Continuing Education and Training (CET) programme and included the launch of the new MyCPD platform.  

View the 2021-2022 Annual Report for more detail about our achievements and plans for 2022-23.