Consultation: Indicative Sanctions Guidance - Updated Draft for Feedback
The General Optical Council (GOC) is the regulator for the optical professions and businesses in the UK. We currently register around 35,000 optometrists, dispensing opticians, student optometrists, student dispensing opticians and optical businesses. The groups on our register are called registrants. For more information, please visit our website: https://www.optical.org/
Why we are consulting
We are inviting stakeholders to provide feedback on proposed updates to our Indicative Sanctions Guidance. This guidance supports members of the Fitness to Practise Committee (FtPC) in understanding their responsibilities and in making fair and just decisions when determining whether a registrant’s fitness to practise is impaired, and, if so, what sanction (if any) should be imposed.
What are we doing?
As part of our regular policy review cycle, we have made relatively minor updates to the Indicative Sanctions Guidance. We are now seeking feedback on the revised draft, which is open for public consultation.
What’s changed?
The changes made include:
· Section 4 – Equality and Diversity
· Section 13 - Adjournments and Proceeding in the Absence of the Registrant
· Section 15.2 – Mitigating Factors
· Section 15.8 – Absence of Evidence in Mitigation
· Section 16.12 – Criminal Conviction
· Section 18 – Dishonesty
· Section 20.4 – Findings of Fact
· Section 23 – Discrimination
· Section 23.7 – Sexual Misconduct or Sexual Harassment
How to take part
We welcome your feedback on the updated guidance. Please share any comments, questions, or concerns by Thursday 13 November 2025.
You can complete the online survey by clicking 'Take the Survey' on the box on the right hand side of the screen to begin. Use the 'Next' and 'Previous' buttons to navigate through the questions. Most questions are optional, and we welcome full or partial responses.
To save your response part-way through or at the end, you will need to register on the system. Registration is optional.
What happens next?
The consultation will be open for 6 weeks, from Thursday 2 October – Thursday 13 November 2025.
After it closes, we will review all feedback received and consider whether further changes to the guidance are needed.
A summary of the consultation outcomes will be published on our website in due course.
We expect to publish our revised guidance in December 2025.
Documents to review
Before completing the survey, we recommend you read the following documents:
· Consultation Document (PDF and Word versions available)
· Draft Equality Impact Assessment
These are available at the bottom of this page.
If you have any questions about this consultation, please email Vineeta Desai (Head of Hearing Operations) at: vdesai@optical.org
