Safe and effective eye care for all
Today we launched our new corporate strategy 2025-30 with our vision of safe and effective eye care for all.
Why have we chosen this vision?
Because whilst public trust in optical services remain high, some groups of patients face higher barriers to accessing services and are getting worse outcomes. Equally, our registrant survey data suggests that registrants’ experiences of working in the sector are unequal. Tackling these issues effectively will be a long-term journey and involve many organisations and individuals. But how can we, as a statutory regulatory body, begin to make a positive difference?
The strategy identifies three objectives to help us to achieve our vision:
- Creating fairer and more inclusive eye care services
- Supporting responsible innovation and protecting the public
- Preventing harm through agile regulation
We want to foster collaboration, embrace innovation, and enhance our regulatory approach. Alongside the strategy we have also published our external business plan for the year 2025/26, which gives more detail on the work we will carry out in the first year of the strategy to achieve our objectives.
When drafting a strategy, you reflect on the past and present in order to think about the future. Our strategy covers a period of five years. Developments in technology, service delivery, business models, commissioning and working patterns are changing the face of eye care. These changes present both opportunities and challenges that regulation must respond to. Our style of regulation will also have to evolve to meet modern expectations of regulators and respond to these challenges. As in healthcare, so in regulation, preventing harm before it arises is better than treating problems after the fact.
The focus of this strategy is on areas of change, but we are committed to continuous improvement across our core statutory functions such as setting standards, approving qualifications maintaining the registers, and managing our fitness to practise operations. Also, the effective realisation of major reforms delivered in the current strategy period, such as in education and training, updated professional standards and digital transformation, will continue to be supported and adjustments made as necessary.
We engaged with stakeholders as we developed our strategy and are grateful for the insights they provided. We recognise we are one of many in a wider landscape of professionals and organisations working to improve eye care in all four nations of the United Kingdom for the benefit of patients and service-users. We are committed to working collaboratively with partners across the sector to achieve our collective vision for change. We encourage you to come on this journey with us.
