GOC agrees to disagree

A decision not to implement a facility to allow payment of General Optical Council (GOC) fees in staged instalments was perhaps the most controversial of the Council's decisions at its meeting on September 23 in Harley Street.

Despite repeated and vociferous demands from the Association of British Dispensing Opticians to introduce staged payments (News 04.12.09), the Council decided that such a scheme would require significant development and ongoing costs to provide.

Hearing from its registration department that it was not convinced that the benefits for some registrants would outweigh the significant administrative costs, the Council concluded that a staged payment facility should not be implemented at this point. Matthew Tait of the registration department described it as 'a finely balanced issue' and revealed that potential overheads were estimated at around £30,000 in one-off establishment costs and £50,000-£100,000 in ongoing annual costs depending on take up and other factors. It was also revealed that no other regulator with yearly fees below £400 per year currently offers a staged payment facility.