OFNC calls on government for an additional £350m of funding for NHS primary eye care

The Optometric Fees Negotiating Committee (OFNC) has called for an additional £350m funding for NHS primary eye care.

The national negotiating body for eye care in England states this investment is "affordable for the NHS in England,” accounting for 0.17% of the Department of Health and Social Care’s 2025–2026 planned day-to-day budget.

The OFNC has highlighted that this boost in funding would “help stabilise existing services by more appropriately covering the cost of providing an NHS sight test, in the same way the Scottish and Welsh governments have supported more sustainable models of out-of-hospital care.”

The call comes in a statement issued by the OFNC detailing its response to the Government’s second phase Spending Review.

Committed to in last year’s Autumn Budget and led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Government pledged to set resource budgets for three years and capital budgets for five years, with reviews every two years.

The Treasury sought written submissions, including from representative bodies, for phase two of its Spending Review – a process that the Government uses to set all its departments’ budgets for future year.

In its response, the OFNC expressed its support for the moving of more care out of hospital to be delivered by the profession, and for the delivery of the Government’s three big shifts for the NHS – hospital to community, treatment to prevention, and analogue to digital.

However, although the OFNC welcomes the Government’s commitment to focusing on economic growth and delivering the three big shifts for the NHS, it believes that the current approach to NHS primary eye care “must change” in order to achieve these goals.

It highlights that the “modest investment” being called upon will enable the optical sector to support the delivery of these goals. It emphasises that primary eye care is a “major investor” in training and education, providing 80,000 jobs, with the sector worth an estimated £4 billion by 2026.

OFNC chair, Paul Carroll, explained: “Lord Darzi’s independent review of the NHS was right; NHS funding needs to be rewired to shift care out of unsustainable hospital models of care. Only this will fix the hospital eye service capacity crisis, which is putting sight at risk.

“That is why we have called for the Treasury to work with DHSC to address underfunding of primary eye care services in England. It is time to stop disregarding the evidence on the cost of providing vital NHS primary eye care services.”

Read the AOP’s response to the Spending Review 

Government’s second phase of the spending review consultation: OFNC submission

The OFNC’s response to the second phase of the Spending Review, February 2025