GOC Launches 14-week Sight Test Consultation

The rules that govern how you deliver a sight test haven't been rewritten since 2013. That's about to change, and the General Optical Council wants your opinion before it does.

On 19 July 2026 the GOC opened a 14-week consultation on its draft updated statement on the testing of sight. Alongside it sits a parallel consultation on revised standards for supervision and delegation. Together they touch almost every independent practice in the country, because both documents are really asking the same question: who is allowed to do what, and when.

This isn't a tidy-up exercise. It's the regulator deciding, in public, how far delegation can go and whether a sight test can be split across time, person or place. Get involved now, or find out later how someone else answered that question for you.

What's actually on the table

The GOC press release names two issues at the centre of the consultation. First: delegation of parts of the sight test. Second: separation of the sight test by time, person or place.

Neither is new territory in practice. Pre-screening, autorefraction, visual field checks — plenty of this already happens with support staff involved in some capacity. What's new is that the regulator wants to set the boundary explicitly, rather than leaving it to case-by-case judgement and professional indemnity nerves.

The delegation question

The draft statement confirms optometrists can delegate some parts of the sight test to a suitably trained person. That's the headline. The condition attached to it matters just as much: the optometrist stays in overall control of the process and oversees the tasks being carried out.

GOC director of regulatory strategy Steve Brooker put it plainly. Sight testing has changed significantly since the last position statement was published in 2013, and the update is about catching the rules up to how practices actually operate now.

"Our position on delegation reflects expert consensus that certain pre- and post-screening checks can be effectively and safely delegated, as commonly happens now, freeing up optometrists to focus on clinical decision-making and patient care," Brooker said.

Read that again. Freeing up optometrists to focus on clinical decision-making. That's a workforce efficiency argument as much as a clinical one.

Separating the sight test — time, person, place

The second strand is broader and more consequential. The GOC is proposing a regulatory framework within which, in its words, "registrants can choose to innovate responsibly" around separating parts of the sight test.

That single phrase opens the door to remote elements, split appointments, and models where different stages of a test happen with different people in different locations. The draft sets out safeguards to protect patients alongside this flexibility, but the direction of travel is clear: less rigid, more room to design your own model.

Brooker was careful to draw a line the GOC isn't moving. Sight tests must still include both eye health and vision checks. "This feature of the sight testing regime throughout the UK delivers tremendous public health benefits, which we are determined to maintain," he said. Innovation in delivery, not erosion of what the test actually covers.

What this means if you own an independent practice

Here's the part that should have every independent owner reading past the press release. Delegation and separation rules aren't neutral. They shape who can build a more efficient clinic model faster — and speed matters when you're competing against a group with a training budget and a template rollout plan.

A corporate multiple can standardise a delegation model across forty sites overnight, backed by a central clinical governance team and a compliance department writing the protocols. An independent owner has to work out, alone, how far they're comfortable delegating, how to train the person they're delegating to, and how to document oversight in a way that would survive a GOC audit.

That's not a reason to sit this consultation out. It's the opposite. The independents who respond now — who tell the GOC what a workable delegation model looks like for a two-optometrist practice rather than a forty-site chain — have a real chance to shape a framework that fits their business, not just the multiples'. The ones who don't respond get a framework built mostly around someone else's operating model.

There's a genuine upside here too. Done properly, delegation frees the optometrist's clinical hours for the work only they can do — refining diagnoses, managing complex patients, having the conversations that build a loyal patient base. That's exactly the kind of clinical depth an independent can sell that a twenty-minute corporate slot can't.

Before 21 October

Submissions to the consultation close on 21 October 2026 and can be made through the GOC's online consultation hub. That's fourteen weeks — plenty of time to read the draft properly, talk to your team about what delegation already looks like on your shop floor, and put your actual experience in writing rather than assuming someone else will make the case for independents.

Three things worth doing this week: read the draft statement in full, not just the summary. Ask your dispensing opticians and optical assistants what tasks they already handle informally, because that's your evidence base. And write the response before October, not during the last week of the consultation window.

Consultations like this one decide the operating rules independents will live under for the next decade — the practices that shape them tend to be the ones already building for growth.

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