Mary Perkins running PR. She has admitted donning disguises and visiting Specsavers stores, posing as a customer. Perkins was made an honorary fellow of Cardiff University in 2005. The same year she received the "Rotary International Community and Vocational Service Award" for her services to charity and in 2006 won the inaugural Spirit of everywoman Award. Perkins was the first female optician in the UK to receive the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2007. The accolade was also in recognition of her other charitable work, including the Guernsey annual "Specsavers Liberation Tea Dance for
Specsavers family control of the firm, which currently employs all three of their children in senior roles. Continued expansion into Europe is planned. It is also intended that the company will continue to supply hearing aids. The Perkinses attribute their success to their franchise model, and to the deregulation of the UK Opticians market by the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, allowing opticians to use previously forbidden advertising and marketing techniques to rapidly take over a market that had belonged to independent local opticians. The Perkins have said of the remaining local opticians that "their days are numbered",