OO erased after £30,000 fraud

A General Optical Council fitness to practice committee has erased Scotland-based optometrist Brian Kelly from its registers after it heard he made multiple dishonest claims for payment and failed to engage with the regulator’s investigation process.

The committee said Kelly had made inappropriate and fraudulent claims for payment on 25 specific occasions. ‘These instances were themselves a selection from a pattern of wider fraud over a period of about four years. The committee was in no doubt that the facts that it had found proved, in relation to the registrant’s dishonesty, amounted to misconduct,’ it said.

The GOC said that Kelly had over-claimed remuneration from the NHS worth £29,398.30 in the space of four years. This included giving vouchers for replacement spectacles in circumstances not permitted by NHS regulations and claiming for work in excess of that actually carried out.