The practice

Fifty-two years at the top of Wyle Cop.

Three owners, one shopfront, and a decision in 2016 to stop doing twenty-minute appointments. Everything else about how this practice runs follows from that one change.

Spectacle frames arranged in rows on the display racks inside the practice

Since 1974

We stopped selling minutes and started selling the examination.

Geoffrey Vane opened as Pemberton & Vane, Ophthalmic Opticians in 1974, in the building where we still are. Nadia Reyhani did a pre-registration year here in 2004, came back as an employed optometrist, and bought the practice from Geoffrey in 2016. The name changed then; almost nothing else did.

The one real change was the appointment book. A twenty-minute slot is the industry standard and it is enough to do the tests the regulations require. It is not enough to look properly at an optic disc, take a history, explain an OCT image to somebody who has never seen one, and answer the question they actually came in with. So we went to forty minutes and put the price up to £48 to pay for it — and then, because it seemed dishonest not to, we put the price on the website.

That is the whole strategy. We see fewer people per day than a chain and we tell them what things cost before they walk through the door.

1974Trading on Wyle Cop, under three owners

40 minEvery appointment, NHS or private

2016Practice bought by its own former pre-reg

61Referrals written last year, 9 of them urgent

Who examines you

Three clinicians, and the numbers to check them by.

The General Optical Council keeps a public register of every optometrist and dispensing optician in the country. Ours are below. Look them up at optical.org — it takes about twenty seconds and it is a better trust signal than any badge we could put in a footer.

Nadia Reyhani

BSc (Hons) MCOptom · Independent Prescribing

Optometrist & practice principal

GOC 01-24817

Trained at Aston, pre-reg here in 2004, bought the practice in 2016. The independent prescribing qualification means eye infections and inflammation can be treated and prescribed for here rather than sent to a GP who will usually send them back. Runs the dry eye clinic on Wednesdays and does most of the referral letters.

Tom Ackroyd

FBDO (Hons) CL · BCLA member

Dispensing & contact lens optician

GOC 02-18342

Fifteen years dispensing, eight of them fitting specialist lenses. Takes the jobs other practices send away: prescriptions past 1.74 index, rimless drilling, and paediatric fittings that need the bridge measured three times. Glazes on site with our own edger, so a lens replacement is usually same-day rather than a fortnight.

Priya Mahal

BSc (Hons) MCOptom

Optometrist · myopia management lead

GOC 01-31905

Runs the children's clinic and the myopia programme — cycloplegic refraction, axial length at baseline and every six months, and a frank conversation about whether a particular child needs the programme at all. Sees most of our under-tens. Speaks Punjabi and Hindi.

“Geoffrey used to say the examination is the only thing in the shop you cannot show anyone. Everything else is on a rack with a price on it. So the least we can do is say how long it takes and what it costs.”

Nadia Reyhani · practice principal since 2016

The room

What forty minutes buys.

A slit lamp biomicroscope set up in the consulting room — The slit lamp. Cornea, lens and anterior chamber, at up to 40× — this is where a cataract is actually graded.

A trial frame, the adjustable frame used to hold test lenses during refraction — The trial frame. Slower than a phoropter and better, because you can look around the room through it rather than at one letter.

A hand holding the graduated dial of an optical instrument during a lens measurement — Measuring in quarter dioptres. The step between one lens and the next is 0.25 D, and most people can tell.

Where we stand

Four things we will not do.

We will not hold your prescription

The Opticians Act 1989 requires us to hand it to you immediately after the test, signed. You can spend it anywhere, including online. Nobody here will sigh about it.

We will not sell you an OCT you do not need

Once for a baseline, then by clinical indication. If you are twenty-five with no family history, we will say so and take the £25 off.

We will not run a two-for-one

A second pair on the same prescription is 25% off, permanently. Offers that appear and disappear are just a way of not having a price.

We will not charge you to adjust glasses

Whoever sold them. It takes four minutes and it is how people end up trusting an optician enough to come back for the examination.

Booking

Come and see the room.

You are welcome to walk in and look at frames without an appointment, and to have your existing glasses adjusted while you are here. No charge, no obligation, no clipboard.

Book an eye test 01743 246 880