Four nations, four economics
England £24.13 from 1 April 2025. Wales £46.20 under WGOS 1. Scotland banded — £46.53 for an undilated primary examination under 60, £57.80 dilated, £50.52 for 60 and over undilated. Northern Ireland £25.52. A practice trading across a border is running two different businesses.
The backdating pattern
England's 2025/26 fee was determined eight months into the year and backdated to 1 April 2025, with contractors told they need take no action. As at August 2026 there is no published 2026/27 determination, so £24.13 remains operative. The sensible position is to budget on the operative fee and reserve for a backdated correction.
Domiciliary
In England, £40.80 for each of the first and second sight tests during any one visit and £10.21 for the third and each subsequent — payable on top of the £24.13, and only where the test is at a residential centre or the patient's home. A day centre test attracts the standard fee with no addition.
The sight test fee is not the GOS income
Vouchers are the other half, and for most practices the larger half. The England values have been unchanged since 1 April 2024, set by SI 2024/294: voucher A £42.40 for a simple single vision prescription, rising through B £64.26, C £94.14 and D £212.40 for the strongest single vision, with bifocals at E £73.10, F £92.72, G £120.48 and H £233.56. Voucher I is £217.58 for hospital eye service glasses outside A to H, and J is £61.77 for contact lenses prescribed after an NHS trust sight test. A to J is the complete set — there is no voucher K.
Then the supplements, which are routinely under-claimed: prism at £13.67 a lens for single vision and £16.67 otherwise, tints and photochromics at £4.77 and £5.28, and £69.60 each for small glasses and for special facial characteristics. Complex lens vouchers are £15.81 for single vision and £40.57 for anything else. Repairs and replacements run their own scale, from £13.17 for one lens in band A to £217.50 for two in band H, with £13.47 for a front of frame, £7.98 for a side and £16.06 for a whole frame across all bands.
Northern Ireland uprated all of this by 4% from 1 April 2026 — the only UK nation to do so — and carries a timing rule worth knowing: a practitioner may claim the value payable on the date the spectacles are supplied rather than the value in force on the sight test date.
Three months, not six
The regulation says six months. PCSE says three, and has done since 1 January 2024, and three is the one that governs your cash. The three-month window covers submission, processing and payment, not just submission — so a claim rejected near the end of it can expire before you have corrected and resubmitted. For GOS1, GOS5 and GOS6 it runs from the date of the sight test; for GOS3 and GOS4 from the date the appliance is supplied.
And when the money actually lands depends on where you are
There is no single national GOS payment date, which is the thing most commentary gets wrong. PCSE publishes a payment diary with one row per legacy area and four events: claim cut-off, the GMP run the next day, upload three to five days later, and in bank two to three days after that — around nine to twelve days from cut-off to cash. Across the sixty-nine areas listed, in-bank dates span from roughly the 7th to the last working day of the month.
Two identical practices in different ICB areas can therefore sit three weeks apart on GOS receipts. Look up your own row before you build a cash-flow forecast, and use the colour-coded grid rather than the summary columns on the right of that file, which do not agree with it.