News from the General Optical Council

The General Optical Council (GOC) held its third Council meeting of the year on 16 September 2025.

The agenda included approving a business case for a thematic review into commercial practices and patient safety, the GOC’s Annual Report 2024-25 and the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Annual Report 2024-25.

Findings from the Registrant Workforce and Perceptions Survey 2025 and Lived Experience research, and the UK Optical Education Report 2025, were also discussed.

Thematic review: Commercial practices and patient safety

Council approved the business case for a thematic review into commercial practices and patient safety.

Through the GOC’s surveys, including the 2025 Registrant Workforce and Perceptions Survey (see below), and wider engagement, many registrants and other stakeholders have indicated concern about the influence of some commercial practices on the ability to deliver safe patient care. These include:

overbooking/ghost clinics (typically where a business double books patients in a clinic, to mitigate against lost appointments due to patients that don’t attend, which may result in rushed or reduced appointment times).
short sight testing times.
commercial targets and incentives (such as selling products that are financially beneficial to the business or that patients may not clinically require).
lack of transparency around costs and eligibility for NHS financial support.
refusal to treat young children, in part for commercial reasons.

The aim in carrying out this review is to help the GOC understand the nature and extent of these practices and their impacts, and to identify any interventions that the GOC and the wider eye care sector can take to help mitigate against this.

Information will be gathered between September 2025 and March 2026 through internal and commissioned research, as well as stakeholder engagement. This will include a series of LinkedIn conversations with registrants.

At the conclusion of the review, the GOC will publish a report summarising its key findings and recommendations.

Annual reports

Council approved the GOC’s ‘Annual Report, Annual Fitness to Practise Report and Financial Statements for 2024-25′.

The report sets out how the GOC has fulfilled its statutory functions as a regulator and a charity, and highlights some of its key work and achievements over the past year. These include:

launching a new five-year strategy for 2025-30 which is more outward focused and includes new strategic objectives.
implementing new Standards of Practice for optometrists and dispensing opticians, optical students, and optical businesses, which reflect changing patient expectations and developments in practise.
taking steps towards modernising business regulation, seeking views on extending regulation to all businesses providing specified restricted functions, with the aim of strengthening public protection.

Council also approved the GOC’s ‘EDI Annual Report 2024-25′ which details its EDI achievements across the past year. This report reflects the GOC’s commitment to inclusive and fair practice across all areas of its work.

Achievements highlighted in the report include enhancing registrant EDI data to make more informed comparisons and identify disparities, and strengthening EDI training for GOC staff.

Council discussed the disparities between demographic groups in the fitness to practise (FtP) area that are set out in the report, including for Asian/Asian British and Muslim registrants. Council was updated on progress by an Unfair Outcomes Working Group that has been set up, including research on where differential outcomes may be occurring.

Both annual reports will be published in due course.

GOC’s Registrant Workforce and Perceptions Survey 2025 and Lived Experience research

Council discussed findings from both the GOC’s Registrant Workforce and Perceptions Survey 2025 and the qualitative research exploring the lived experiences of registrants who have experienced harassment, bullying, abuse and discrimination at work.

The Registrant Survey shows that 36% of registrants experienced harassment, bullying or abuse from patients and service users in 2025. Although still high, this is down from 42% in 2024. However, registrants experiencing these behaviours from managers, colleagues and others is largely unchanged. Reporting remains low with only 35% reporting harassment, bullying or abuse, and 25% reporting discrimination.

The lived experience research found that harassment, bullying, abuse and discrimination could have serious and profound effects, including mental and physical health issues, reduced confidence, and less desire for career progression.

Overall job satisfaction levels are down, with the Registrant Survey showing just 55% of respondents feeling satisfied in their role over the past 12 months, compared to 62% in 2023. The most common reasons for dissatisfaction given were not feeling valued, heavy workload and poor salary.

The joint sector statement committing to a zero-tolerance approach to bullying, harassment and discrimination, and the GOC’s updated standards helping to promote a more inclusive workplace environment, were noted as positive actions that had already been taken to tackle this. However, Council acknowledged that the GOC must continue to provide strong leadership in this area and work with the sector to tackle these issues. The thematic review (see above) was identified as one way of combatting negative behaviours in the sector.

The GOC hopes this research will inform a sector wide effort involving a wide range of organisations to help improve workplace cultures.

There was also discussion around findings showing low awareness of the GOC’s FtP process or registrants thinking it was unfair. The GOC will continue to monitor this area. Continuing Professional Development sessions on FtP learnings, the FtP Focus learning bulletin, and an annual third-party audit of the GOC’s FtP decisions were all highlighted as work the GOC is already doing in this field.

The full findings from the Registrant Workforce and Perceptions Survey 2025 will be published shortly.

Read the lived experience research on harassment, abuse, bullying and discrimination at work.

UK Optical Education Report 2025

Council noted the UK Optical Education Report 2025, which forms part of the GOC’s quality assurance for all education providers offering GOC-approved qualifications.

Key findings from this year’s report are:

all except three qualifications across optometry and dispensing optics have adapted to the GOC’s Education and Training Requirements (ETR).
optometry (OP) qualifications continued to report strong admissions figures with 1,201 admissions in 2024-25, an increase of 5% on the previous year. The number of trainees on independent prescribing qualifications fell from 521 in 2022-23 to 415 in 2023-2024.
316 students were admitted to Dispensing Optics (DO) qualifications in 2024-25, a decrease of 6.5% from 2023-24, and the number of trainees on contact lens optics qualifications increased by 34% to 89 trainees in 2023-24.
the proportion of Year 1 students progressing to Year 2 has fallen in OP over a three-year period (78.8% in 2023-24, 81.7% in 2022-23, and 88.5% in 2020-21). For DO, 92% of students with the largest DO provider progressed to a second year.

The full report will be published later this year.

Read the full September 2025 Council papers.