What we do
The examination, the children, the contact lenses, the frames, the NHS rules nobody explains, and what to do when something goes wrong with an eye on a Thursday evening. Each has its own page with what happens, what it costs and who does it.
01
A full eye examination takes forty minutes: history and symptoms, vision and prescription, eye pressures, a look at the front and back of the eye, an OCT scan of the retina, and a proper explanation of what we found. £35 privately, free on the NHS if you qualify.
£35 for a private examination with the OCT scan included.
02
Children's eye tests are free on the NHS and we do them from about three years old, with picture charts, no reading needed, a parent in the room, and drops only when they tell us something we need to know. If glasses are needed, the NHS voucher covers a children's frame and lenses in full.
Free on the NHS for under-sixteens and under-nineteens in full-time education.
03
A contact lens assessment measures the shape of your eye and your tear film, tries lenses on you, and teaches you to put them in and take them out, with trial lenses to take home. £40, then a plan from £16 a month that includes the lenses, the aftercare and the solutions.
Assessment and fitting £40, including the trial lenses and the teach.
04
Six hundred and forty frames on the wall, from our own-brand range at £49 to independent designers, chosen with a dispensing optician who measures them to your face and explains the lens options and the price on a card before anything is ordered. Single-vision lenses from £45, varifocals from £120.
Frames from £49.
05
In Wales, children, over-sixties, people with diabetes or glaucoma, close relatives of glaucoma patients and people on certain benefits get a free NHS sight test, and many also get a voucher towards glasses. The voucher table on the prices page says what each is worth, and we take it in full against any frame.
NHS sight test free if you qualify.
06
A red or painful eye, a sudden shower of floaters or flashes, a shadow in your vision, a sudden blur, something in the eye: ring and you are seen the same day under the Wales Eye Care Service, free, without going to your GP or A&E first. If it needs the hospital we refer directly and ring ahead.
Free under the Wales Eye Care Service for anyone registered with a Welsh GP.
Independent
Elin owns the practice and pays everyone a salary, so the optometrist who tells you that your glasses are fine for another year loses nothing by saying so, and the dispensing optician who talks you out of the dearer varifocal is doing his job. We sell glasses, obviously. We would just rather sell you the right ones once than the wrong ones twice.
Forty minutes with the optometrist, the OCT scan included, £35 or free on the NHS if you qualify. Tell us the days that suit and Val confirms a time within the working day. Sudden eye problem? Ring, and you are seen today.
