Role for community optometry in neighbourhood health services, Wes Streeting says

The NHS will work with organisations, including Specsavers, as part of its neighbourhood health service, the health and social care secretary said

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Female optometrist with long brown hair performing an eye exam

Getty/Nikola Stojadinovic

Lucy Miller

18 July 2025

Community optometry will play a role in the Government’s neighbourhood health service, health and social care secretary Wes Streeting told the Commons Health and Social Care committee this week (14 July).

Organisations, including Specsavers and Boots, will work alongside the NHS in specific service areas, Streeting said.

Streeting was being questioned by the committee over who would lead and deliver the Government’s promised neighbourhood health service.

Plans for the service were outlined in the 10-Year Health Plan, which was published on 3 July.

“In terms of neighbourhood health services, we would anticipate these would be mainly NHS organisations,” Streeting said.

He added that this would include “working with people like Boots and Specsavers to deliver a greater range of services.”

These services would “always be led by the NHS,” Streeting said.

Specsavers clinical services director, Giles Edmonds, welcomed Streeting’s comments.

“We are ready to respond to the call to work with neighbourhood health centres to provider a greater range of services,” Edmonds said.

Specsavers has the capacity to help, Edmonds added – noting that 96% of the population of England live within 10 minutes of a Specsavers practice.

“Community optometrists and audiologists, and their teams, are already experts in delivering neighbourhood health services,” Edmonds said.

“They are ready and able to do even more to meet the eye and hearing health needs of the communities that they serve, providing equitable access to care and supporting the wider NHS.”

Specsavers will continue to collaborate with commissioners, colleagues, and the Government to “deliver the changes to transform access to care and deliver on the ambitions set out by the health secretary,” Edmonds added.

National consistency in glaucoma services and access to treatment for urgent, minor eye injuries and illnesses in all community optometry practices, alongside a nationally commissioned NHS primary care audiology service, are all “critical,” Edmonds believes.