AN OPTOMETRIST from Bolton has been banned for working for a year after making sexual comments to a female customer and touching her inappropriately.

During an examination at the opticians where he worked, Stewart Clough told the woman she had a "cracking figure" and remarked he found "athletic bodies on women very attractive", a professional hearing was told.

He told her he rode horses and that doing so "gave him a tight butt" and later, while placing glasses on her face, he said "I will just play with your ears" and then wiggled the top of her right ear without her consent.

She later reported her concerns to the police, who contacted the General Optical Council.

It prompted Clough, aged 53, to look up the woman's address on confidential files and she received a hand-delivered letter in which he offered her £1,000 bribe and a free pair of glasses to drop the case.

Clough's suspension comes after his brother and fellow optician Martin Clough, who owns Clough's Opticians in Newport Street, Bolton, was jailed in September last year having admitting six counts of voyeurism at Bolton Crown Court in relation to secretly filming female customers at the business.

Stewart Clough quit the family business in 2005 after a backlash to him standing as a BNP candidate in Bury Council elections.

He was banned by the council's fitness to practise committee after it heard evidence about the appointment at Valuevision opticians in Swinton on December 19, 2015.

The committee's report said: "The committee had no hesitation making a finding of misconduct.

"It was quite satisfied that the registrant’s actions were serious and fell well below the standards expected of a registered optometrist.

"The committee found his evidence at times to be implausible and evasive, and primarily motivated by his intention to minimise and avoid the consequences of his own actions.

"The registrant’s actions clearly crossed the patient/professional boundary with a sexual motivation and that this persisted up until the point when she was given the trial frame as a part of the routine eye examination.

"She was in a clearly vulnerable position and the committee found no other plausible explanation for the registrant’s actions and comments other than they were sexually motivated."

Clough admitted uttering the inappropriate comments and sending the victim the letter after tracing her address.

He denied the ear-wiggling incident was inappropriate, but the committee found it was and he denied squeezing the woman's right shoulder and running his hand down her arm without her consent, but the committee found he had done so.

Clough was given a 12-month suspension order.

The committee said: "The sequence of events covering a short period between December, 2015 and January, 2016 amount to a one-off aberration in an otherwise unblemished career."