2023-24 annual report published

We have published our annual report for the year ending March 2024, which sets out our achievements of 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:    

• For the second year in a row, we met all 18 of the Professional Standards Authority’s (PSA) Standards of Good Regulation, providing assurance to patients, the public, and registrants that we are discharging our regulatory duties effectively. 

• Updating our Standards of Practice to ensure they are fit for purpose and reflect the current context within which registrants practise, students are trained, and businesses operate. 

• Working closely with education providers to implement our updated education and training requirements (ETR) for qualification we approve, with 60% of first year optometry students entering the new four-year integrated master’s degree programmes in the 2023/24 academic year. 

• Supporting EDI requirements by implementing the Welsh Language Standards, ensuring our website is now available in Welsh and most documents that are available on the website in English have been translated into Welsh. We also updated our phone line to include options in Welsh.  

• Convening the sector to support action on high profile issues and publishing a joint statement committing to a zero-tolerance approach to bullying, harassment, abuse, and discrimination across all working environments. 

• We achieved the Customer Excellence Standard (CSE), an independent quality mark recognising customer focus in organisations. To achieve the CSE, we had to meet 57 elements across five areas including: delivery, quality, information, professionalism, and staff.  

• In response to feedback from registrants, we continued to build our collective understanding of optical care provision by visiting different practices around the UK as part of our ‘optical familiarisation programme.’ Last year, approximately 144 staff and members visited optical practices and manufacturers. 

• We removed information about registrants’ gender from the public register following a public consultation, given there is no requirement under the Opticians Act 1989 or Registration Rules 2005 to publish information about a registrant’ gender.  

• We commissioned a review of our EDI performance and plan, which informed our new EDI action plan for 2024-25. This action plan will allow us to lay the foundations for an ambitious EDI strategy for 2025-30. 
• We continued to invest in our digital transformation, commissioning a new Case Management System (CMS) which will help us manage our fitness to practise caseload more efficiently, automating many functions and helping us to deliver excellent customer service. 

Alongside the annual report, we have published our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Report for 2023-2024, which highlights our key achievements in our EDI work, sets out the progress we have made against our EDI plan and describes our EDI data, which we collect and publish annually. 

View the 2024 Annual Report and EDI report.