Many ‘independent’ opticians in Wales aren’t independent at all – but owned by a group in Lancashire

Martin Shipton

Many opticians across Wales that brand themselves as “independent” businesses are in fact owned by a large corporate group based in the north-west of England, we can reveal.

Hakim Group is an optical business run out of the India Mill Business Centre in Darwen, Lancashire, trading through HO2 Management Limited. It describes itself as the largest family of independent opticians in the UK and Ireland, and it openly invites practice owners to sell up or partner with it. The practices keep their names, their staff, their premises and their local histories. Imran Hakim, its founder, currently holds 524 live directorships, according to Companies House.

Julian Davies Opticians, for example, has seven practices across Cardiff, Newport, Blackwood and Usk. The homepage headline on its website is: “Your Independent Opticians across South East Wales”, and the welcome text says the practice is proud to be family-run and proud to be independent.

Companies House lists HO2 Management Limited as a person with significant control over Julian Davies Limited (05385749) since January 2023, holding the right to appoint and remove directors. Imran Hakim joined the board the same day. The registered office is India Mill, Darwen. Julian and Gaynor Davies, members of the founding family, resigned as directors in 2015.

Another example is Osmond Drake in Penarth. Its homepage calls it “Penarth’s family opticians par excellence” and describes a third-generation family business, naming Marc Drake as its current owner and lead optometrist.

The Companies House record for Osmond Drake Optical Limited (14679256) lists HO2 Management Limited as holding 75% or more of the shares and voting rights, together with the right to appoint and remove directors, notified on 21 February 2023. Imran Hakim was appointed a director that same day.

Marc and Alison Drake were appointed directors six weeks later, on 5 April 2023, and neither has ever held a recorded share or vote in the company. Marc Drake’s own entry as a person with significant control ceased on 30 September 2026.

All three directors, including both Drakes, give their correspondence address as Unit 317, India Mill Business Centre, Darwen, despite their place of residence being recorded as Wales. The only address given anywhere on the website is that of the Glebe Street practice.

Evans & Hughes has four practices in Ammanford, Llandeilo, Lampeter and Pontarddulais. Its homepage still opens with “Croeso!” and names three men as the owners of the business. One of them resigned as a director in 2021.

HO2 has been a person with significant control since June 2023. Imran Hakim was appointed a director the same day, and the registered office is in Darwen.

The detail I found most telling: the correspondence addresses recorded at Companies House for the remaining Welsh owners are not in Carmarthenshire. They’re Unit 317, India Mill Business Centre, Darwen.

The Optic Shop, with branches across Swansea, Carmarthen, Porthcawl, Bridgend and Cross Hands, has gone furthest. Since March 2024, HO2 has held the controlling stake outright, along with the right to appoint and remove directors. Both previous individual shareholders ceased to be shareholders on that date.

Monnow Eyecare in Monmouth calls itself an award-winning independent practice, and it is well regarded, having won three Optometry Wales awards in 2025. HO2 has been a person with significant control since December 2020. Imran Hakim is a director, the registered office is in Darwen and, again, the local co-owner’s correspondence address on the register is in Darwen rather than Monmouth.

Chalmers in Cardiff was established in 1940 and has operated on Albany Road and, more recently, Wellfield Road. Its “About” page is headed “Independent opticians in Cardiff” and then, several paragraphs down, refers to the practice entering its next chapter under new ownership – without saying whose. Hakim Group recruitment material has named Chalmers directly in connection with a Cardiff vacancy.

Registered office

Under the Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015, every company must show its registered office address on its website, along with its registered name, registered number and the part of the UK where it is registered. Those requirements are set out in regulations 24 and 25.

Not one of these practices displays its current registered office address. Julian Davies gives a company number but no registered office address. The same applies to Monnow Eyecare, Chalmers and Allport.

The wording of those footers is close to identical, and the sites appear to share a design – suggesting whoever produced them was working to a common template, rather than each practice independently making the same omission.

The privacy policy on the Evans & Hughes website states that the company’s registered address is 58 Rhosmaen Street, Llandeilo. But the Companies House register says Darwen. Pritchard Cowburn gives neither a company name nor a company number, only its two branch addresses in Narberth and Cardigan.

Chain

Plenty of people avoid Boots, Specsavers and Vision Express for no reason more complicated than not wanting to give their money to a chain. So, is a group of practices under common ownership, sharing central services and a back office, a chain? It has most of the ingredients. What it lacks is a shared name over the door, and that’s the only part the majority of customers can see.

So what does “independent” actually mean?

It isn’t a protected term. Hakim Group uses it to describe itself – “the largest family of independent opticians in the UK and Ireland”. Within the trade, “independent” plausibly means “not Specsavers, Boots or Vision Express”: a practice where the optometrist has clinical freedom, chooses their own frames and isn’t working to a national script. On that reading, a Hakim practice is independent, and everyone using the word is being sincere.

But that is not what it means to a woman walking into a shop in Llandeilo that has had the same name over the door for as long as anyone can remember. To her, it means locally owned, locally run, locally banked. Two entirely different meanings, one word, and no rule anywhere that says which one has to be displayed on the window.

When a practice retains its name and its staff, but its board, its registered office and its owners’ addresses for service have all moved to Lancashire, what exactly is the word still describing?

The other question is where the money goes. These are profitable local businesses, and a customer choosing them over a chain generally assumes the surplus stays in the town, benefiting the local economy as it is spent again.

If a practice has sold a controlling or near-controlling stake to a Lancashire company and buys its back-office services centrally, then some of what’s spent in Ammanford or Monmouth is leaving Wales – as dividends, management charges, service charges or central purchasing margins.

Concious act

Picking the practice on the high street over the chain in the retail park is a small, conscious act, and people make it for reasons beyond price – who employs their neighbours, where the profit ends up, whether the high street stays theirs.

None of that means outside ownership is wrong. It means the customer is making that choice without the information needed to make it properly, and the information isn’t hard to publish. That’s the whole gap: not wrongdoing, but transparency. Welsh customers can’t make an informed decision about a Welsh business when the one key piece of information that would inform them has been left off the page.

We asked Hakim Group to comment but received no response to our message.

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