I think some of you may be missing the point here. If you are aircrew and you wish to wear contact lenses instead of CFS in the air, you are obliged to get them from Service sources which, until recently, meant the Optometry Dept at Cranwell.
With the majority of the active airfields being within an hour or so of Cranwell, most people could get there and back quite easily. Accepted, the Scotland team have always had futher to travel. Penny Shaw also used to run an outpatient clinic at Brize for Brize/Lyneham and the SHF.
People will now have to beat their way into the centre of Birmingham having first negotiated a cumbersome Med Centre appointments system. That will all take time and will also come at a cost to your own stn budgets.
The issue is that 'efficiencies' taken by one organisation often have unintended consequences. In this case, convenience for the few appears to be being achieved through the inconvenience of the many.