What the GOC consultation means if you locum in optometry

The General Optical Council is consulting on what a testing of sight is, who may carry out parts of it, and whether a supervisor has to be in the building. Responses close on 21 October 2026. If you locum, you are often the registrant whose name attaches to work you did not watch being done, and by the GOC's own 2026 figures three in ten optometrists locum.

What the GOC has put on the table

The consultation opened in July 2026 and runs for 14 weeks. It does two things at once: it updates the GOC's 2013 statement on the testing of sight, and it revises the standards on supervision and delegation.

On delegation, the proposals would let an optometrist hand specified pre- and post-screening tasks to trained dispensing opticians or to non-registrants. The tasks named are intraocular pressure, visual fields, autorefraction and retinal imaging. The condition attached is that the optometrist "remains in overall control of the process" and oversees the tasks being carried out, as the GOC described it in June.

The revised statement would also support separating the sight test by time, by person and by place, which the GOC names explicitly as teleoptometry. Safeguards are proposed around clinical audit, staff training, patient suitability, informed consent and vulnerable patients. The accountability line is unchanged and stated plainly in the GOC's July announcement: clinical responsibility for the patient, and for all patient care, stays with the optometrist conducting the sight test.

Those are the headline proposals as the GOC described them. The detail sits in the consultation documents, which are worth reading before you respond.

Two supervision options, and only one of them needs a registrant on site

For the supervision of unregistered colleagues, the GOC has put two options forward. Option 1 would allow remote oversight while a registrant is on the premises. Option 2 would allow remote oversight with no requirement for any registrant to be on the premises. For student supervision, the current requirement for a registrant to be physically present and ready to intervene is kept.

A locum can land on either side of that. You might be the remote supervisor for a site you have never walked into, or the only optometrist in a practice where the pre-screening has been delegated around you by someone who left at lunchtime. Both change what you should establish in the first ten minutes of a shift, and Option 2 changes it more.

Who the optometry locum is, in the GOC's own numbers

The GOC published its 2026 registrant workforce and perceptions survey on 2 September 2026, based on 3,451 registrants who responded in March and April 2026. The optometrist profile: roughly 19,300 registered optometrists, 15,054 full-time equivalent; 42% working full time and 58% part time; 30% working as locums; 60% involved in delivering enhanced eye care services; 26% holding management responsibilities or a supervision role. The survey also recorded 15% planning to leave the profession in the next 12 months. On satisfaction, 58% were satisfied, 26% dissatisfied and 16% neither.

For context rather than trend, the College of Optometrists' Optical Workforce Survey in 2015 found 17.5% of optometrists working primarily as locums. That is a different question from the 2026 one, so read it as direction, not as a clean comparison.

The time findings and the delegation proposals arrived in the same year

The same survey asked about commercial pressure. Sometimes or frequently, 48% said the standard time allocated for a sight test had been insufficient to provide safe patient care. Pressure to see a high number of patients in a day was reported by 41%, pressure to meet commercial targets at the expense of patient care by 33%, and being asked to overbook clinics by 28%.

What people did about it is the harder number: 33% raised concerns informally with colleagues, 32% did nothing, 20% told a line manager, 19% told senior or practice management, and 2% used a formal process.

That is the argument for responding rather than reading. Delegation and separation of the sight test can buy clinical time or be used to compress the slot further, and the safeguards written into the final statement decide which. A locum sees more practices in a year than most employed colleagues see in five. Responses go through the GOC consultation hub until 21 October 2026.

The CPD cycle is halfway through and 43% of registrants are on track

The current cycle runs from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2027. Three years, not two. At the end of June 2026, the halfway point, 43% of registrants were meeting the general points requirement, about 10,900 optometrists and dispensing opticians. Nearly 80% had completed a personal development plan, which leaves around 5,300 who had not. The GOC says progress is slightly better than at the same stage of the previous cycle, and asks registrants to log activity as they go rather than rush at the end.

Registrants are expected to obtain at least six points a year, so at the end of year two on 31 December 2026 an optometrist working to that pace has 12 of the 36 points logged and one year left for the remaining 24.

Change is coming, but not for this cycle. The GOC consulted between 19 January and 19 April 2026 on replacing the minimum points system with an outcomes-focused scheme from the 2028 to 2030 cycle: less CPD volume overall, stronger incentives for post-registration qualifications, no minimum provider-led session requirement, no mandatory reflective statements for self-directed activity, and an end to CPD provider audits. Abolishing points in favour of an annual declaration would need legislation. The GOC's 2026/27 plan says it will conclude that consultation and publish the revised scheme. None of it alters the current cycle.

What to check before 21 October, and before 31 December

• Respond through the GOC hub before 21 October 2026. The delegation and supervision questions are where locum experience is evidence the GOC cannot get from a practice owner.
• Count your points now, not in December 2027, and check both the interactive split and that you hold a point in each of the four domains. The domains are where people usually find the gap.
• Confirm your personal development plan exists on your GOC record. Roughly 5,300 registrants had not done this by June 2026.
• Book the peer review event if it is not booked. Locums tend to leave this last because it needs other people's diaries.
• Before each shift in a practice that delegates pre-screening, establish who did what, what training they hold and who is supervising, on the premises or remotely. You sign the sight test.

Keeping the evidence together is the practical problem, since no single practice holds the whole picture of your year. Sessional keeps a CPD evidence store and a professional record for optometrists, and what to keep for CPD sets out the shape of it.

Sources

• General Optical Council consults on testing of sight and delegation (General Optical Council, 15 July 2026)
• Consulting on the testing of sight (General Optical Council, 25 June 2026)
• Consultation hub: proposed testing of sight statement and proposed revisions to supervision and delegation (General Optical Council, open until 21 October 2026)
• Looking ahead to 2026/27 (General Optical Council, 30 April 2026)
• Registrant workforce and perceptions survey 2026 (General Optical Council, 2 September 2026)
• GOC publishes the results of its 2026 registrant workforce and perceptions survey (Optometry Today, AOP, 3 September 2026)
• 43% of GOC registrants on track to meet their CPD requirements (Optometry Today, AOP, 21 July 2026)
• Introduction to CPD and registrant requirements (General Optical Council, undated)
• Consultation launched on reforms to GOC CPD scheme (General Optical Council, 19 January 2026)
• Optical Workforce Survey (College of Optometrists, 2015)