“How do you know you are making progress?”

Like every cliché, there is an element of truth to it. But, as David Boyle has argued in his fantastic The Tyranny of Numbers, a slavish obsession with only valuing what can easily be counted is extraordinarily dangerous. The temptation to focus on measurable targets to the exclusion of things less susceptible to being counted warps organisations’ activities. And celebrating success in hitting artificially created targets leaves little time to consider whether the way those targets were hit was actually optimal. It is all very well hospitals seeking to bring down waiting lists for example, but doing it simply by permanently removing the names of patients who have missed a single appointment is not what the NHS is about.

Fortunately at the AOP most of our success measures are relatively obvious: membership numbers and satisfaction; profitability; the number of educational and legal support sessions we have delivered; and so on. The difficulty comes with how we assess the success of our policy and influencing activity. It is easy enough to count the number of MP meetings held or policy papers issued, and there are established mechanisms for measuring the reach of our media work, but all of those are measures of activity rather than impact. Explaining your ideas is the easy bit; getting them listened to and, even more importantly, implemented – that’s difficult.

That is not just an AOP problem: I have worked in and alongside many campaigning organisations and there is no simple KPI to measure success that I have come across. Of course, there are times when – hopefully – your policy idea translates into reality, but getting from initial idea to full implementation is a hit and miss, years-long journey. So how do you know you are making any progress?

Explaining your ideas is the easy bit; getting them listened to and, even more importantly, implemented – that’s difficult

All you can do is look out for subtle, unpredictable signs of progress. That can include – as it did this week – attending an invitation-only event, rubbing shoulders with both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. And in truth, we have been in close contact with the Labour party for some 18 months now, sending them briefings and diligently attending policy roundtables. It is in the last two months that we have seen real indications the new team is listening, with an explicit mention in the manifesto, and Wes Streeting in two media interviews during the election campaign, weeks apart, citing the example of High Street optometry as an effective way to take the pressure off hospitals.

The precise words Streeting used – a repeated namecheck of Specsavers – has given cause for some to ponder if Labour is about to hand out an exclusive contract to do all NHS work: something that would be utterly contrary to all NHS commissioning principles, and which would be impractical from a delivery and commercial point of view. As usual, the truth is more prosaic: like any politician, he used language and referenced a brand that was recognisable and likely to cut through with voters.

But what Labour has said, in the run-up to the election at least, shows that our asks have been heard and, perhaps, that the new Ministerial team is committed to moving more work from hospitals into community optometry. But it is a long way from actually happening, which is why it is essential that we keep up the pressure.

At a time when eye care waiting lists are growing and the number of ophthalmologists is shrinking, we can offer access to a workforce ready and eager to help

In working out what we do now, we need to build on what has worked over the past year or two. We need to recognise the problems that the new government is facing – disaffected doctors, a crumbling physical estate, soaring waiting lists and, above all, massive demands on public expenditure – and present ourselves as part of the solution.

At a time when eye care waiting lists are growing and the number of ophthalmologists is shrinking, we can offer access to a workforce ready and eager to help. With investment needed to prop up crumbling hospitals, we can offer a community-based infrastructure without the need for investment in a system of diagnostic hubs. We have the optical coherence tomography devices to capture the images needed; all we require is the IT connectivity.

However, we need to take the limits on public spending seriously. Remember the magic money tree? What we need to do is show that the existing spend can be used more efficiently and moved out of secondary care into community care to pay for the work which needs doing. That is modelling we don’t yet have, but we, alongside partners from across the eye care sector, have commissioned research that should, relatively soon, provide us with real-world financial numbers, which we can present to government to add ballast to our arguments.

We are in a good position. But let’s be realistic: eye care is a long way down the Government’s list of priorities. Yes – the focus on bringing down waiting lists may produce some additional opportunities. But the likelihood of a Westminster government adopting in England the sort of comprehensive approach to community optometry which has been implemented in Scotland and Wales in the next year or two is remote. If that is our ultimate goal – and we think it should be – we are probably going to have to wait a year or two until they are ready to take the idea seriously.