Consultation to remove reference to a registrant's gender on the public register

Overview

Our proposal to remove information about a registrant’s gender from the public register follows the outcome of our consultation on a draft policy to support registrants who wish to update information about their gender on our register. Some respondents to this consultation, including the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), questioned why we provide information on gender on the register at all.

We consider that we should no longer include information about a registrant’s gender on the public register. This is because it is not necessary for public protection purposes, we believe there is little use of this information by the public and members of the public have alternative means to obtain this information.

Why your views matter

We are interested in stakeholders’ views on this issue to ensure that there are no unintended consequences of this position and/or risks that cannot be mitigated against.

This consultation will last for a period of 12 weeks.

Please refer to our privacy statement for more information about privacy, right to erasure and our role as a data controller: 

https://consultation.optical.org/privacy_policy/