Outgoing RNIB CEO: “We’ve got to be an organisation that tries to change the national picture”

OT caught Stringer in the final weeks of his role, before he officially handed over the baton to incoming chief executive, Simon Antrobus, formerly the CEO of BBC Children in Need.

With the crisp winter wind acting as a soundtrack to the video call, Stringer told OT that his immediate plans after stepping down from the RNIB involve setting off for a holiday in warmer climes: watching the cricket in Australia.

We asked Stringer to look back on his seven years at RNIB, the changes that have been made in support for blind and visually impaired people, and what still needs to be a priority in the years ahead.

How would you describe your time at RNIB?

It has been just under seven years, and I think it has been in two broad halves. First, the statutory inquiry and managing COVID-19 coincided. It took us two and a half years from when I started to get through the statutory inquiry and put in place all the improvements we made in governance, safeguarding controls, and finance.

Managing COVID-19 through that as well was a challenge – making sure the organisation could exist, cope, and thrive – and crucially, supporting our beneficiaries. We did a lot of work around improving accessible communications, making sure distancing processes were thought-through, and making sure vaccines and testing processes were accessible.

We worked with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and supermarkets to guarantee delivery slots for blind and partially sighted people who were worried about not being able to get food because it was a challenge to go out to supermarkets. Last year, I represented the Disability Charities Consortium at the national UK Covid-19 inquiry, talking about how the pandemic impacted disabled people.

The second half of my time here has been spent in trying to drive our strategy. This is not only to continue with the very good services that we provide at the RNIB, but working individually and collectively within the various groups that we sit on to inform some of the big national questions around eye health, education, employment, travel and transport, and rehabilitation after an eye health diagnosis – our five strategic pillars.

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What would you identify as some of the biggest milestones at RNIB during your time at the charity?

We’ve continued investing in growing some of our critical services. Our eye care liaison officers (ECLO) have gone from supporting 47,000 individual appointments in my first year, up to 72,000 in 2024–25. We now have 132 ECLOs, covering 279 NHS sites – meaning over 90% of eye clinics and eye hospitals now have access to an ECLO.

I think that has given us a bridgehead into developing the Eye Care Support Pathways and given us enormous credibility in doing that.

One of the proudest outcomes of my time at RNIB is building a coalition across the other charities, the professional bodies, the NHS, across the devolved nations, and various corporate partners.

We had a celebration marking two years of this coalition in November in Manchester [RNIB’s Collaborate for Good event]. This was great because not only was it celebrating what we’ve been doing for two years, but it pointed to real progress and traction. The regions presenting – Gloucestershire, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, and South Cumbria – showed how the Eye Care Support Pathway made an enormous difference to service design and changing people’s experience of going through an eye health diagnosis, with real prospects of a national roll-out. Louisa Wickham, clinical lead of eye health for the NHS in England, and Tim Morgan, clinical lead for Wales, presented at the event. We had real support and traction; it’s a milestone I’m proud of.

We’ve got to be an organisation that tries to change the national picture. We can’t just apply a sticking plaster to the symptoms and not deal with the causes. The Eye Care Support Pathway is a really good opportunity to shift the dial.

We can’t just apply a sticking plaster to the symptoms and not deal with the causes. The Eye Care Support Pathway is a really good opportunity to shift the dial

The other milestone I’m pleased with is around employment. Trying to improve life chances for visually impaired people through employment is a big part of what we do. Only one in four visually impaired adults who want to work are in a job, which means three out of four aren’t.

We’ve been working with the Disability Charities Consortium this year to import into Sir Charlie Mayfield’s Keep Britian Working review. We ran an event at the end of November in London with a room full of employers and charity partners and a panel of disabled people sharing their own employment experiences. Sir Mayfield talked to his review and said that the hard work starts now to implement it.

RNIB will play a big part, we hope, in that implementation strategy now. We have our foot in the door with the work we’ve done to build that relationship with Sir Mayfield and his team, through the RNIB and the Disability Charities Consortium.

Those are examples that show we are not just a service deliverer, we’re more than that. If we are successful, we are informing and positively influencing big national questions.

What change have you seen in terms of support for blind and visually impaired people that you would like to see continue or progress further in the future?

The milestones we’ve reached sound impressive, but the reality is that life is still pretty thin if you’re visually impaired in the UK. We’ve got to keep going and try to change some of these big national processes, as opposed to just dealing with the symptoms.

I think of two areas: one will be that we have a really good toehold with the Eye Care Support Pathway. It is really just getting that rolled out across the UK. I don’t see too many obstacles because it’s not expensive. It’s quite low-tech. It is really useful. It meets high volume because we know that eye health is about 8.5% of all outpatient appointments in the year. If you’re looking to get a grip on waiting lists and get numbers down, then we’re an obvious place to look. I feel quite confident that the Eye Care Support Pathway is only going to go forward and make pretty good progress.

I feel quite confident that the Eye Care Support Pathway is only going to go forward and make pretty good progress

I am less confident about vision rehabilitation. What happens after you have an eye health diagnosis? You can go through the pathway and be referred to a charity, local authority, or for help with an employer. But within the local authority, we know that vision rehabilitation is really badly served.

We’ve carried out Freedom of Information requests and found only a very small minority discharge their statutory duty to provide a response within 28 days.

It was a big focus of our November Parliamentary event – we had 90 MPs or representatives visit for a briefing on vision rehabilitation, making the point that it’s a postcode lottery in terms of what is provided. In some cases, we know that some local authorities don’t actually have the employees in place to discharge their responsibilities anyway.

If I were to wave my magic wand, I would love vision rehabilitation to make a big step forward in the next few years

You might have a positive eye health diagnosis experience, but then come up short because the local authority and others are not able to help you with the rehabilitation – which might be simple. It might be use of technology, and some gadgets to help at home; it might be around mobility. None of this is earth-shattering, but it isn’t provided.

We didn’t see any money in the Budget for that either, which is not a surprise in a challenging budget, but doesn’t make it any easier. If I were to wave my magic wand, I would love vision rehabilitation to make a big step forward in the next few years.

Why does eye care, and support for blind and visually impaired people, need to be a priority for policymakers?

There is a high volume of people who have an eye health issue, and with an ageing population and health issues such as diabetes, there are only going to be more. We think there are more than two million people living with sight loss in the UK today, but this could double to more than four million by 2050.

There is a ticking time bomb of people with eye health issues. As a vision impaired person, if you don’t have better support around vision rehabilitation, or education, employment, and travel and transport, your life can be enormously diminished. That is not great for the potential four million people, and it is certainly not helping the country fulfil its potential. There is all this talent unable to easily live as full a life as possible and contribute as much.

For example, we know that only 9% of blind and partially sighted people feel safe making independent walking journeys in their neighbourhood.

Then there are the health issues, physical and mental health, that might stem from that and so you end up with a vicious cycle where the costs of dealing with that are greater than the cost of making the investment in the first place.

There has been some good joined-up working with the Association of Optometrists (AOP) and Fight for Sight on health economics to really make the case that investment up front is greater than not investing and then paying the costs further down the line.

We think that did have some sway in the summer, when we advanced some of these numbers to Government. One of the things I believe the RNIB needs to do going forward is keep making the economic case – in a world where the economy is in a tough spot, we need to make sure that we can make that argument cogently.

What role does optometry have, or can it have going forwards, in providing and supporting services?

It’s critical. We work closely with a coalition of the professional bodies, including the AOP and the College of Optometrists. We’re working with High Street practices because the Government is trying to get medical support into the neighbourhood and away from hospitals, so using the High Street is critical. We have good relationships with the likes of Specsavers, Asda, Boots, and independent providers, all pushing in the same direction to try and get a better joined-up health journey.

Ongoing partnership is critical, whether you’re a corporate partner in the High Street, or a charity trying to help people, or the NHS as the ultimate backstop. Because of all the effort that has gone in, and the relationships that have been built, everyone gets the big picture, whilst not ignoring some challenges along the way to make sure that it works for everybody. Optometrists have an absolutely critical part to play, because the lion’s share of people presenting with an eye health issue come through an optometrist first.

Optometrists have an absolutely critical part to play, because the lion’s share of people presenting with an eye health issue come through an optometrist first

What is a personal highlight from your time with RNIB?

Sometimes you pinch yourself that you are sitting in the chair of CEO. We are a national entity with scale and reach, with access to a lot of professionals and senior corporate leaders. [As CEO] you are very privileged in the slot you have, and the reach and impact you can generate. I never lost sight of that – it was a real privilege.

My previous background was in retail, so I used to love being on the metaphorical shop floor, talking to customers and staff, poking around, going to a warehouse and actually seeing what was going on. You found out a lot more on the shop floor than sitting in the office.

In RNIB I really loved, and will miss a lot, being on the front line in our services with staff, volunteers, and our beneficiaries – being with an ECLO and going out with our volunteers.

You get so much more when you’re sitting on the helpline and seeing the team dealing with issues that people ring in with. Or, we have a printworks in Gateshead and seeing what they are doing to provide accessible formats of documents and our reading services for beneficiaries. Sitting there, as I have, putting CDs and USBs into envelopes to send across the whole of England, you think: ‘this is us bringing joy to an individual, or another book for someone who relies on our reading services.’

Those are the thrills, where you think: this is why we do this. That is the bit I am going to miss most, I think, is being on the ‘shop floor’ with our teams and our beneficiaries.

Those are the thrills, where you think: this is why we do this

What is next for you personally?

First, I am taking a trip to Australia to watch the cricket. I am keen to stay in the broader disability sector. I’ve just become a trustee of the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), who we work with on a variety of things, and there are a few other irons in the fire. I’m sure as 2026 unfolds, I will be staying connected with the third sector.

I’ve had seven years at RNIB, which I've really enjoyed, and now is a good time to pass it on. But I’ve learned a lot and it would be good to try and use that knowledge and those contacts for good into the year ahead. I’m keen to do that.