As an Optometrist or Dispensing Optician you have to ensure you keep up your professional standards. This is done through the General Optical Council via CET points.

In a three year cycle (current cycle runs from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2021), each Optometrist, Dispensing Optician and Contact Lens Optician has to obtain a minimum of 36 points across multiple competencies. If you have completed extra qualifications and are now working as a therapeutic Optometrist then you will need a total of 54 CET points. A detailed breakdown of these and how the points need to be split can be obtained by clicking here.

If you qualified as an Optometrist or Dispensing Optician part way through the three year cycle, then your CET points requirement are slightly different. You will need to gain one CETpoint for each full month that you have been qualified until the end of the three year cycle, of which 50% of these should be interactive.

COVID 19 Note: The overall requirements for 36/54 CET points to be obtained by the end of 31 December 2021 remains, however the requirement to obtain a minimum of 6 CET points per annum has been waived for 2020.

CET points can be obtained from a multiple of sources such as

• AOP / OT
• Specsavers magazine
• The Optician
• ABDO
• 100% Optical
• Optrafair
• Johnson and Johnson
• Coopervision
• DOCET

Optometrists including locum Optometrists, who provide General Ophthalmic Services (GOS) services in England and Wales can also apply for a CET grant. Currently this is not applicable for Dispensing Opticians or Contact Lens Opticians and ABDO has raised concerns about this but to no avail.

This allowance is always claimed in arrears for the previous year. We advise all Optometrists (including locum Optometrist) who have carried out GOS tests last year to apply for this taxable grant.

The GOC were looking to make changes to the CET system for the existing cycle with 2019 being a transition year, however this was postponed. All Optometrists, Dispensing Opticians and Contact Lens Opticians should have received an email from the GOC inviting you to provide suggestions to changes to the CET scheme (to make it more flexible and relevant to your career growth). The consultation is open until 20 August. The consultation can be found on the GOC's online consultation hub by clicking here.