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A GOC fitness to practise committee considering an application for an interim order for an optometrist known only as H has ruled that it will be heard by a differently constituted committee at a later date.

The hearing was held in private after it was agreed by the Council's lawyers and H's legal advisers that it was mandatory to do so as it was a 'health case'. At the hearing the registrant's legal representatives applied for it to be postponed.

FTP committee chairman Robert Holdsworth said: 'One member of this committee is aware of an issue which is irrelevant to this application but which would raise in the mind of an informed and fair-minded observer the possibility of bias. The other members of the committee were aware of the nature of the issue and therefore could not proceed either.'

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