With the first doors on advent calendars now open, the countdown to Christmas is truly upon us. In the Optician office that means the editorial team are combing through 2024’s biggest optical stories for a review that will run in the final issue of the year (December 20 in case you are wondering). It is always interesting to look back on the year in optics and, this time out, it struck me that 2024 could meaningfully be described as a year of two halves.
The earlier part of the year was dominated by the run up to the UK general election, which, neatly for the purposes of this column, was held just after the midpoint of the year on July 4.
During this period politics lead the discourse in Optician to a greater degree than any time in my memory as, among many other stories, the Labour Party, then in opposition, unveiled plans for optometry to help reduce NHS waiting times and various lobbying efforts were launched.
Since the election, Optician has charted the incremental progress (or otherwise) towards the realisation of the proffered changes, which will no doubt continue into 2025 and beyond.
However, there has been far more space in the Optician news pages during the second half of the year for non-political stories, hence a year of two halves.
With all the furore this year on possible futures for optics within the UK, it strikes me that a political development with immediate consequences for practice life has flown under the radar to a fair degree.
The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 came into effect on October 26. This change, which is extremely welcome in my view, places greater responsibilities on employers to actively prevent sexual harassment and has been described by some experts as a notable shift in UK workplace discrimination laws.
Hopefully the implementation of this legislation is one of the final nails in the coffin for tolerating seedy behaviour in the workplace. Given the increased liabilities involved, I suspect employers will already be taking the reasonable steps specified.
