Visus writes: DVLA tender is not the only game in town

The optical profession has been sorely troubled these past few weeks by the unprecedented and divisive DVLA tender won by a non-UK based group against a coalition of independent and corporate practitioners represented by LOCSU. This appears even more divisive when the strategic plan of LOCSU states ‘supporting and enabling LOCs to increase the role of community optometrists and opticians in providing primary eye care services’ and there is at least one member of the Specsavers group embedded within. A negotiating own goal?

But the DVLA tender is not the only game in town and it’s not the most important. What of our bread and butter, the English GOS sight test and accompanying spectacle vouchers? Surely the only other relevant negotiating body in optics will have lost no opportunity to press our case. I refer to the OFNC (Optometric Fees Negotiating Committee), an unusual title given that much of the ‘fees’ discussed are those associated with dispensing vouchers (and therefore dispensing opticians). News of the negotiating position emerged almost unnoticed last month, a request for a 2.5 per cent increase in the sight test fee and a 3.5 per cent increase in voucher values. The submission is admittedly more in hope than expectation, so the receipt of this paltry DH largesse will be greeted by the oink of porcine aviators.