NHS sight test
- Full 40-minute appointment, same as private
- Retinal photography included
- Every two years, or annually if you qualify
£0if eligible · 40 min
Independent optometrists · Shrewsbury, since 1974
Your eye test, priced on the door.
Forty minutes with a GOC-registered optometrist on Wyle Cop. Forty-eight pounds, or nothing at all if you qualify on the NHS — and we will tell you which before you book, not after. You leave with your prescription in your hand, and you are free to take it anywhere.
£4840 min
£7860 min
Freeif eligible
Thu3:40pm
Examinations
Four appointments, four prices, no third one hidden behind a phone call.
Every examination below includes refraction, an external and intra-ocular examination, tonometry and visual fields — the tests the Sight Testing Regulations require, and the ones a twenty-minute slot has to rush.
Standard eye examination
- Refraction, muscle balance, colour vision
- Slit-lamp and intra-ocular pressure
- Retinal photography, kept and compared each visit
£4840 min
Enhanced examination, with OCT
- Everything in the standard examination
- OCT cross-section of the retina and optic nerve
- Baseline stored, so next year's scan has something to be compared against
£7860 min
Children, under 16
- Free on the NHS, no exceptions, every year
- Testable without reading — we use pictures and matching
- Myopia management discussed if the prescription is moving
£0NHS · 40 min
NHS entitlement
You may already be entitled to a free sight test.
Roughly two in three people who walk in assuming they will pay turn out to qualify. Read the left column; if any line is you, the test is free and the NHS pays us directly.
| If you… | How often |
|---|---|
| Are under 16 | Every year |
| Are 16, 17 or 18 and in full-time education | Every year |
| Are 60 or over | Every two years |
| Have diabetes or glaucoma | Every year |
| Are 40+ with a parent, sibling or child who has glaucoma | Every year |
| Are registered partially sighted or blind | Every two years |
| Receive Pension Credit Guarantee Credit, Income Support, income-based JSA or ESA, or qualifying Universal Credit | Every two years |
| Hold a valid HC2 certificate | Every two years |
| Voucher | Value | Typically |
|---|---|---|
| A | £42.40 | Single vision |
| B | £64.26 | Single vision |
| C | £94.14 | Single vision |
| D | £212.40 | Single vision, very strong |
| E | £73.10 | Bifocal |
| F | £92.72 | Bifocal |
| G | £120.48 | Bifocal |
| H | £233.56 | Bifocal, very strong or prism |
Who examines you
Three clinicians. Three registration numbers you can check.
Every optometrist and dispensing optician in the UK is on a public register held by the General Optical Council. Ours are below with their numbers, so you can look us up at optical.org before you come in rather than take a row of logos on trust.
Nadia Reyhani
BSc (Hons) MCOptom · Independent Prescribing
Optometrist & practice principal
GOC 01-24817
Tom Ackroyd
FBDO (Hons) CL · BCLA member
Dispensing & contact lens optician
GOC 02-18342
Priya Mahal
BSc (Hons) MCOptom
Optometrist · myopia management lead
GOC 01-31905What we look for
An eye test is a health check that happens to end in glasses.
Most of what an examination finds has nothing to do with your prescription. If something in the left column is happening to you now, use the timing in the right column — and if it says today, telephone rather than booking online.
Glaucoma
Painless, gradual loss of peripheral vision. No symptoms until late, which is why pressures and fields are measured every visit and why the over-40s with a family history are tested free every year.
Routine · 12 months
Macular degeneration
Straight lines beginning to bend or a smudge in the centre of what you are looking at. OCT sees the retinal layers thinning before you notice anything.
Soon · 1–2 weeks
Diabetic retinopathy
Bleeding at the back of the eye from diabetes, usually silent. Separate from your NHS diabetic screening — we look too, and we compare against last year's photograph.
Routine · 12 months
New floaters and flashes
A sudden shower of black specks, arcs of light at the edge, or a curtain coming across. This can be a retinal detachment and it does not wait.
Today · telephone
Red, painful eye
Particularly with light sensitivity or blurring. Our independent prescribing optometrist can treat most causes here rather than sending you to a GP or A&E.
Today · telephone
Dry eye & blepharitis
Gritty, watering, worse on screens and in the wind. Common, treatable, and routinely dismissed. Thirty-minute assessment, £55.
Book · 1–2 weeks
Children's vision
Sitting close to the television, headaches after school, one eye turning. Amblyopia is treatable young and much harder later.
Book · free on NHS
Something wrong today? We keep two emergency slots back every morning. Under the NHS urgent eyecare service there is usually nothing to pay; privately it is £55.
The other half
Then the part where you have to like them.
The examination is the clinical half. Choosing frames is the half you actually live with, and it is where a practice usually stops publishing numbers. Ours are below. Nothing on the wall is priced by how expensive it looks — the lens does most of the work, and Tom will say so.
| What | From |
|---|---|
| Frames, our own range | £95 |
| Frames, designer | £160 – £395 |
| Single-vision lenses, anti-reflection coated | £55 |
| Varifocals | £145 – £420 |
| Thinned lenses, 1.67 / 1.74 high index | £70 |
| Complete prescription sunglasses | £129 |
| Myopia-control lenses for children | £250 per pair |
Aperture Care
Thirteen pounds a month, and the eye test stops being a decision.
A membership, not a discount card. It exists because people put off an examination over £48 and then arrive two years late with something we could have caught. Cancel any month; we do not tie you in.
£13per month · per person
- Annual enhanced examination with OCT, included
- Unlimited adjustments, repairs and re-glazing
- Same-day urgent appointments, no charge
- 20% off every pair of spectacles
- Dry eye assessment included once a year
- Children under 16 in your household added free
From the book
What people say afterwards.
“I went in for reading glasses and came out with a referral. Nadia found raised pressures and a thin optic disc on the OCT, wrote to the hospital that afternoon, and I was in the glaucoma clinic within three weeks. I had no symptoms at all.”
“Our daughter's prescription had gone up half a dioptre a year for three years. Priya explained axial length in a way an eight-year-old could follow, and was honest that the evidence is good but not a guarantee. Eighteen months on it has barely moved.”
“I have a −9.00 prescription and I have been talked out of frames I liked my whole life. Tom found a small acetate that took a 1.74 lens and edged it here so the rim hid the thickness. First pair I have not hated.”
1974Trading on Wyle Cop, under three owners
40 minEvery appointment, NHS or private
3GOC-registered clinicians, named above
61Referrals written last year, 9 of them urgent
Booking
Thursday at 3:40pm is free.
Book online in about a minute, or telephone and speak to Ellen, who has been on the front desk since 2011 and will know whether you are due. Nothing to pay when you book.