The new GOC CET cycle comes into force from the beginning of January 2016. If you do not meet the required points for the current CET cycle it is important that you know what the GOC will charge to re-join if you are removed from the register for a shortfall in CET points for the last three-year cycle. Therefore it is important that you log into MyGoc to make sure that all the points you have done have been accepted.

You will be given a 14 day appeal time from the date of the letter you will receive in the post to the address that is on your GOC registration. If you do not appeal and you are removed from the GOC register you will not be able to dispense to children, the partially sighted and the registered blind under the Opticians Act or call yourself a dispensing optician, you will also not be able to work as a contact lens optician as you will be removed from the specialty list if applicable.

If you restore to the register before the next year (March 2016- March 2017) ie you restore in January 2016 which is still the current year, you will be charged the following fees:

• £310 retention fee current year (March 2015 – March 2016)
• £70 restoration fee
• Total £380

You will also need to get 12 CET points which can be obtained in the last 12 months and also you will need to get the shortfall points ie if you were four short these will need to be gained.

By 15th March you will also need to have paid for 2016-2017 retention with the GOC at a cost of £320.00 for the year.

This is just notice to advise you of the above fee - so please avoid the shortfall of CET points to stop your removal from the register for this reason.

ABDO still has a few CET events planned, so there's opportunities to acquire points before the end of December:

The GOC is reminding registrants to accept their pending CET points in MyCET if they are to count for the 2013-15 CET cycle. Some 33,202 points remain pending in MyCET, waiting for registrants to accept them.

Many of those registrants have not yet met their requirements for the 2013-15 CET cycle and will be putting their registration at risk if they do not gain and accept sufficient points by 31 December 2015. Registrants who have already met their requirements are not allowed to ‘save’ the points for the next cycle.

There are still 5,192 registrants, around a quarter of fully-qualified registrants, who need to meet their CET requirements before the deadline. While some of these simply have to log into MyCET to accept points, others still need to complete more learning.

The General Optical Council (GOC) will open its new offices in Farringdon on Tuesday 1 December 2015. Staff will be moving from Friday 27 November to Monday 30 November, during which time the office will be closed. Telephone support will be unavailable during this time.

Because of the need to move and install IT equipment, the MyGOC and MyCET sections of the GOC website will be closed during that time. Registrants who wish to use the CET directory to find courses should therefore do so by Thursday 26 November, as after then it will not then be available until Tuesday 1 December. The GOC register will not be updated between Thursday 26 November and Tuesday 1 December.

The GOC’s new address will be 10 Old Bailey, London, EC4M 7NG. Its telephone number, 020 7580 3898, remains unchanged.

When logging into the members' area on the ABDO website please remember to use your ABDO membership number which is shown on your ABDO membership card.

Please note you will be unable to log into members area of the ABDO website using your GOC number!