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Several premises, one set of numbers

A second site does not double the work — it multiplies some of it, divides your corporation tax bands, and leaves the rest exactly where it was. Knowing which is which is most of the job.

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Premises registration: £38 per premisesThree sites is three registrations and three fees, renewing 1 April
Large Veterinary Business: 15 or moreFirst opinion practices or out-of-hours centres. Fewer, and you are Small
Corporation tax limits: DividedBy one plus the number of associated companies
Annual attestation: 70%Of veterinary businesses — the smallest — are outside it

Three sites is three registrations and three fees

The one compulsory registration in veterinary practice is of premises, not of the business — and it is charged per premises. The RCVS holds the Register of Veterinary Practice Premises on behalf of the VMD under the Veterinary Medicines Regulations, and its wording leaves no room for interpretation: the registration fee is per premises, so one main premises and two branches means an annual fee for the whole group of three times the registration fee. At the £38 England and Wales rate that is £114 a year for three sites, exempt from VAT, renewing on 1 April.

What counts as a premises is broader than "the building with the waiting room". The triggers include buildings where vets provide services, premises advertised as part of a veterinary practice, facilities open to the public for animal treatment, closed buildings serving multiple clients, and any location receiving wholesale deliveries of medicines. That last one is the common gap in a growing group: a storage unit or a hub site that takes deliveries and never sees a client.

Voluntary, not required

The Practice Standards Scheme is a separate matter and it is voluntary. Accredited practices are assessed every four years, and the scheme's medicines module meets VMD requirements — which is why an accredited premises is exempt from a separate VMD inspection. PSS fees carry 20% VAT. A multi-site group choosing whether every site is accredited is making a commercial decision, not meeting a requirement.

Two further per-site obligations travel with the premises rather than with the business: the audit of POM-V and POM-VPS supply at least once a year, and five-year retention of the receipt and supply records. In a group, both are jobs that need a named owner per site, because the failure mode is not refusal — it is a site nobody was told was theirs.

Where the CMA line falls

Almost every independent group is Small

The draft Order splits veterinary businesses in two, and the boundary is a long way above most people's assumption. A Large Veterinary Business has 15 or more first opinion practices and/or out-of-hours centres; a Small Veterinary Business has fewer. For scale: the smallest of the six large groups has around 180 first opinion practices, the largest has over 900, and the next largest veterinary business in the country owns 38. A three, five or ten-site group is Small, and gets the longer implementation window on most remedies.

"Most" is the word to hold onto. The extra three months does not apply uniformly, and a group planning on the assumption that it does will be late on three separate things.

Obligation	Large	Small
Out-of-hours contract notice periods and termination fees (Art 19)	Day the Order is made	Day the Order is made
Practice information, price lists, parasiticides, pet care plans (Arts 6–9)	3 months	6 months
Ownership information (Art 5)	6 months	6 months — no gap
Complaints process, logs and mediation (Arts 21–23)	6 months	6 months — no gap
Prescription fee caps (Art 18)	6 months	12 months — a six-month gap
Written estimates and itemised bills (Arts 11–12)	9 months	12 months

All of those periods run from the day the Order is made. The CMA's deadline for making the Order is 23 September 2026 — its own drafting deadline rather than a compliance date — and not one compliance date in the draft is fixed. The out-of-hours provisions are the exception worth acting on now: the twelve-month cap on notice periods and the restriction on termination fees take effect the day the Order is made, for large and small alike. If a group has several out-of-hours contracts on different terms, that is a review to do while there is time.

On reporting rather than compliance, there is one genuine concession: the final report says the CMA will not require the smallest businesses — 70% of all veterinary businesses — to provide an annual attestation to the RCVS, while making clear they must still meet the Order's requirements. That is an exemption from a return, not from the rules, and a multi-site group should not assume it sits inside that 70%. The RCVS levy is sized by the number of first opinion practices you own; the CMA's estimate is £150 to £250 of set-up and £450 to £550 a year per practice, so a five-site group should budget five times a single-site group. The CMA compliance page takes the obligations one at a time.

The group tax trap

Every company you add divides the bands for all of them

Corporation tax is 19% up to £50,000 and 25% above £250,000, with an effective 26.5% between the two from the 3/200 standard fraction. Both limits are divided by one plus the number of associated companies. In a group, that divisor is the single largest tax variable under your control.

An illustrative example. A group holds five companies: three trading sites, a property company and a service company. The divisor is five, so the limits become £10,000 and £50,000. A trading company in that group making £60,000 of profit is now above the upper limit, so it pays a flat 25% — £15,000. The identical company standing alone would pay 25% of £60,000 less marginal relief of 3/200 of £190,000, so £15,000 less £2,850 = £12,150, an effective 20.25%. The group structure costs £2,850 more on that company alone, and the same arithmetic runs on every other company in it. Illustrative figures on the standard marginal relief computation.

A company-per-site structure can put every site on the 25% main rate at profit levels a single company would have taxed at an effective 20%.

That is not an argument for one company. It is an argument for knowing the cost, because the reasons to separate sites are real: ring-fencing, cleaner per-site accountability, and the ability to sell one site without selling the group. The point is that the cost is calculable, and the answer usually turns on whether you expect to sell sites separately. Association is also not limited to shareholdings — HMRC treats companies as associated where there is substantial commercial interdependence, meaning financial, economic and organisational links, so a property company that only ever holds the practice premises counts.

Run your own structure through the incorporation calculator, which carries the divisor, and read partners and buy-ins if a new company is about to arrive because somebody is buying in.

Reporting that earns its keep

Consolidated numbers hide the site that is losing money

A group that reports only in consolidation knows what it earns and not where. That is fine until one site's margin drifts, at which point the group profit figure moves by a rounding error and nobody investigates.

The benchmark to compare against is the CMA's own, because it is the only credible published evidence on independent practice profitability: 36 small independent veterinary firms, EBIT margins from minus 9% to plus 34% over 2021 to 2023, a weighted average of 11% (15% in 2021, 12% in 2022, 9% in 2023), a top sextile averaging 28% and a bottom sextile of 0%. Twenty-four of the 36 saw margins decline across the three years, only nine stayed in the same sextile all three years, and excluding the two firms with large-animal work made no difference to the averages. The six large groups averaged 14%. The CMA also assessed a pre-tax cost of capital range of 7.5% to 10.5% a year, midpoint 9%, over the five years to 2024.

What a group should therefore produce every month, per site, is a short and unglamorous list: revenue split into consultations, procedures, dispensing and preventative care; gross margin on dispensing separately, because that is the line the prescription remedies touch; staff cost as a percentage of revenue; and EBIT margin. Four numbers per site, on the same definitions, is enough to see which site is carrying the group and which is being carried.

The pricing remedies make this urgent rather than merely useful. A published standard price list is published by the veterinary business, and where prices differ between your sites, the published list has to be capable of telling an owner what their own branch charges. That is a decision to take deliberately, on the numbers, rather than to discover when the list goes up. The profitability calculator and the Xero set-up page are the two places to start.

Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK

The draft Order extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so the remedies reach a group wherever its sites are. Veterinary medicines do not travel the same way. Great Britain runs on the Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013, as amended, most recently with effect from 17 May 2024. Northern Ireland applies EU Regulation 2019/6 on veterinary medicinal products and EU Regulation 2019/4 on medicated feed instead — which is why a prescription for an antimicrobial or antibiotic in Northern Ireland is valid for five days, against up to six months in Great Britain. A group with sites either side of that line is running two medicines rulebooks, and the £38 premises fee quoted above is the England and Wales figure. Business rates figures are England only: from 1 April 2026 the standard multiplier is 48.0p, the small business multiplier 43.2p where rateable value does not exceed £50,999, and the high-value multiplier 50.8p at £500,000 and above. A veterinary practice is not a retail, hospitality and leisure property, so it does not get the lower 43.0p and 38.2p multipliers.

How this profession is actually regulated

The RCVS regulates vets. It does not regulate practices.

There is no ownership restriction

Non-vets have been able to own a UK veterinary practice since 1999, and the RCVS has no statutory power to regulate the businesses vets work in — only the individual veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses on its registers. The Practice Standards Scheme is, in the RCVS's own words, a voluntary accreditation.

The CMA identified exactly this in its final report of 24 March 2026: that the system of regulation applies only to veterinary professionals and not to the businesses in which they work.

One registration is compulsory

If your practice supplies or stores medicines you must register the premises with the RCVS, which holds the Register of Veterinary Practice Premises on behalf of the VMD. The fee is per premises — a main site and two branches is three registrations — at £38 a year in England and Wales, VAT exempt, renewing on 1 April.

Defra's consultation on reforming the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 closed on 25 March 2026 and proposes licensing veterinary businesses. The response has not been published and nothing is in force.

Multi-site FAQs

Questions groups ask

Do we register each branch separately?

Yes, and you pay separately for each. The RCVS is explicit that the registration fee for the Register of Veterinary Practice Premises is per premises: one main premises and two branch premises means an annual fee for the whole group of three times the registration fee. At the £38 England and Wales rate that is £114 a year for three sites, VAT exempt, renewing on 1 April. Registration is triggered by supplying or storing medicines, and the triggers include any location receiving wholesale deliveries — including ones the public never enters.

Are we a Large or a Small Veterinary Business?

Small, unless you own 15 or more first opinion practices or out-of-hours centres. The draft Order defines a Large Veterinary Business as one with 15 or more, and a Small Veterinary Business as one with fewer. The CMA's own data puts that boundary a long way above almost every independent group: the smallest of the six large groups has around 180 first opinion practices, and the next largest veterinary business in the country owns just 38. So a three, five or ten-site group gets the longer implementation windows on most remedies.

What is the annual attestation, and do we have to give one?

It is a yearly confirmation to the RCVS about compliance with the Order's requirements, and the smallest businesses are outside it. The final report says the CMA is not requiring the smallest businesses, which it puts at 70% of all veterinary businesses, to provide an annual attestation to the RCVS — while making clear that they still have to meet the relevant requirements of the Order itself. Being outside the attestation is a reporting exemption, not a compliance one, and a group of several sites should not assume it falls inside that 70%.

How does having several companies change our corporation tax?

It divides the bands. The £50,000 and £250,000 limits are divided by one plus the number of associated companies, so a group of five companies divides by five and the limits become £10,000 and £50,000. A company in that group making £60,000 of profit is then above the upper limit and pays a flat 25%, which is £15,000 — against £12,150 for exactly the same profit in a standalone company. Association can also arise through substantial commercial interdependence, so a dormant-looking property company still counts.

Should each site have its own company?

It is a question with tax, funding and administrative consequences pulling in different directions, and the corporation tax point usually pulls hardest against it. Every extra company divides the marginal relief limits for all of them, so a five-company group can pay the 25% main rate on profits a single company would have taxed at an effective 20%. Set against that are ring-fencing, cleaner reporting per site, and the ability to sell one site without selling the rest. The answer depends on whether you expect to sell sites separately.

Which numbers should we compare between sites?

EBIT margin first, because it is the only figure with a credible published benchmark. The CMA's sample of 36 small independent veterinary firms produced margins from minus 9% to plus 34% over 2021 to 2023, a weighted average of 11%, a top sextile of 28% and a bottom sextile of 0%. Twenty-four of the 36 declined across the three years. The six large groups averaged 14%. Comparing your own sites against each other and against that spread finds problems that a consolidated profit figure hides completely.

Ready when you are

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