Recommended fees
The Association is not able to recommend fees to members.
From time to time members ask us for the Association’s recommended fees for dispensing safety spectacles, VDU eye examinations, or other work. The Fair Trading Act 1973, in seeking to remove anti-competitive practices, prohibits associations and similar bodies from setting scales of charges for members to follow or from recommending fees. Fees are entirely a matter for negotiation between the purchaser (usually the patient’s employer or the patient) and the practice undertaking the work. You should make a reasonable charge for the cost of the time, labour and materials needed to undertake the job.
Notwithstanding the length of time this legislation has been enacted, patients may occasionally still present a member with a letter from their employer referring to “the scales recommended by the Association of Optical Practitioners” (this is particularly in relation to fees for dispensing safety spectacles). Patients bearing such letters, or enquiring about recommended fees, should be advised as above, and their employers should be asked to remove the outdated information from their files. A letter to an employer might be along the following lines:
We recently received an enquiry from [ENQUIRER’S NAME] regarding the recommended scale of fees for safety spectacles. This was with reference to the scales recommended by the Association of Optical Practitioners. Since the enactment of the Fair Trading Act 1973 it has been illegal for trade associations and similar organisations to set scales of charges for their members to adhere to. The scale of fees referred to has long-since been withdrawn, and the Association of Optical Practitioners became the Association of Optometrists in 1987. The present legal position is that optical practitioners cannot be bound by any scale of charges and must fix their own charges for [safety spectacles, etc].
Our charges for supplying [ENQUIRER’S NAME] with [safety spectacles, etc] will be: professional fee £_______ (exclusive of VAT) and [safety spectacles and case, etc] at £_________ (VAT inclusive at standard rate).
In order to avoid confusion in the future it would be helpful if you would remove from your files any references to the scales of fees for safety spectacles previously recommended by the Association of Optical Practitioners.
