The RCVS regulates individual veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses. It has no statutory power to regulate the businesses they work in, the Practice Standards Scheme is voluntary, and the only compulsory registration is of premises. That single fact explains most of what has happened to this market.
Article · 15 June 2026
Ask most practice owners who regulates their business and the answer is the RCVS. It does not. The RCVS regulates the people: individual veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses on its registers, against two Codes of Professional Conduct. It has no statutory powers to regulate veterinary practices, and non-vets have been able to own one since 1999.
That is not a technicality. It is the structural fact that explains the corporate roll-up, it is what the CMA identified as one of its three core findings, and it is why the reform Defra has consulted on is aimed at businesses rather than at vets. It also has practical consequences for how you run and sell a practice.
Two registers and two codes. There is a Code of Professional Conduct for Veterinary Surgeons and a separate Code for Veterinary Nurses, each with supporting guidance chapters. Registration is personal: the vet annual renewal fee is £431 for 2026-27, due on or before 30 April 2026, rising to £468 if paid between 1 and 31 May and with removal from the Register if it is unpaid by 31 May. Non-UK-practising registration is £214 and non-practising £71. The registered veterinary nurse renewal fee was £85 for the year from 1 November 2025, on a cycle running 1 November to 31 October.
Two related points that surprise people. First, the title veterinary nurse is not protected by law — anyone may use it regardless of training. The RCVS proposed statutory protection to Defra in 2021 and it forms part of the current reform proposals. Second, what a registered veterinary nurse may do is set by Schedule 3 to the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966: medical treatment or minor procedures not involving entry into a body cavity, on delegation from a veterinary surgeon employed in the same practice, where the animal is under the care of a registered veterinary surgeon and the nurse acts at their direction.
Nothing in any of that reaches the company, partnership or sole trade that owns the premises, employs the staff, sets the prices and takes the profit.
In the RCVS's own words the Practice Standards Scheme is a voluntary accreditation for UK veterinary practices. It runs at several levels — Core Standards and General Practice for small animal, equine and farm animal work, Equine General Practice (ambulatory), Small Animal and Equine Emergency Service Clinic, and Veterinary Hospital. Accredited practices are assessed every four years and may then enter the PSS Awards. Fees carry 20% VAT.
There is a genuine practical benefit: because the PSS assessment includes a medicines module meeting the Veterinary Medicines Directorate's requirements, PSS-accredited premises are exempt from a separate VMD inspection. That is a good reason to be in the scheme. It is not the same thing as being required to be.
So a non-vet who buys a practice is, as far as business regulation goes, subject to a scheme they can decline to join.
One is. If your practice supplies or stores medicines you are legally required to register the premises on the Register of Veterinary Practice Premises, which the RCVS holds on behalf of the VMD under the Veterinary Medicines Regulations. The fee is £38 per premises per year in England and Wales, exempt from VAT, renewing on 1 April.
The important word is per premises. A main site and two branches is three registrations, not one. The triggers are broad: 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 medicine deliveries.
Note what this registration does and does not do. It registers a building for medicines purposes. It does not license the business, does not test who owns it, and carries no fitness or competence requirement for the owner.
Take a four-site independent — a main practice and three branches — with three registered veterinary surgeons and four registered veterinary nurses. Illustrative figures, on the fees above.
The contrast is the point. Today, £152 a year buys a four-site practice its only compulsory business-level registration. The CMA's remedies and the levy behind them would multiply that by more than ten, and would for the first time attach obligations to the business rather than to the clinicians inside it.
One of the three core findings in the final report of 24 March 2026 was that the system of regulation of vets is outdated and wholly unfit for purpose, including that it applies only to veterinary professionals and not to the businesses in which they work.
Paragraph 133 puts the consequence bluntly: non-vets who play a significant role in setting prices, quality standards and processes in veterinary businesses will, finally, be subject to compulsory regulation. Note the tense. That is what the CMA expects to follow from reform it has recommended, not something the Order does.
Defra consulted on reform of the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 from 28 January 2026 to 25 March 2026, receiving 6,219 responses, of which 6,034 were online. It was announced as the biggest vet sector reforms in 60 years. The proposals include a licence to practise for individuals, a fitness-to-practise process, regulation of veterinary businesses and animal healthcare providers, regulation of veterinary nurses and allied professionals, and modernised RCVS governance. The business licensing proposal is described as a new licensing system requiring businesses to meet clear standards, with enforcement action including potential loss of licence where they fail to do so.
And then the part that matters for planning: the summary of responses will be published later in the year and has not been published. There is no draft Bill, no commencement date and nothing in force. Anyone describing business licensing as coming law is ahead of the evidence.
It is worth naming the contrast, because it is unusual. In the legal profession the firm itself is authorised, its owners and managers are approved by the regulator, and an owner who is not professionally qualified changes the authorisation category of the whole business. In accountancy, practising certificates and firm-level licences sit with the practice. In both, buying the business means being approved to own it.
In veterinary practice, none of that applies. A buyer needs the money and the premises registration. The RCVS cannot vet the owner because it has no power over the business. That asymmetry is a large part of why over 60% of UK practices came to be owned wholly or partly by six groups, against 10% in 2013, and it is precisely what Defra has proposed to change.
Section 343(2) of ITEPA 2003 makes a fee for entry or retention of a name in the register of veterinary surgeons, and in the supplementary veterinary register, deductible for an employed individual. HMRC's guidance names those registers, not the professional associations, so the deductibility of BVA or BSAVA subscriptions is a separate question that should be checked against the approved-body list rather than assumed from the register position.
Three things. If you own the practice, treat the absence of business regulation as temporary — the CMA remedies attach duties to the business, and Defra has proposed licensing it. If you are buying, understand that no regulator is going to vet the seller for you, so diligence on the business is entirely on you. And if you are selling, expect a corporate buyer to arrive with no regulatory obstacle in its path.
The obligations that do exist today, and the ones arriving with the Order, are set out in our RCVS compliance guide, with the medicines side in the medicines records guide. The accounts, tax and management-reporting side of running the business is practice accounts and tax, and what a buyer prices in a practice is in the guide to selling a practice. The ownership numbers are in six groups own over 60% of UK practices. Nothing here is regulatory or legal advice.
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Yes, and has been able to since 1999. There is no ownership restriction comparable to those in the legal or accountancy professions. The RCVS regulates individual veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses on its registers and has no statutory powers to regulate veterinary practices, so it cannot approve or refuse an owner. A non-vet owner is subject only to the Practice Standards Scheme, which is a voluntary accreditation, plus the compulsory registration of any premises that store or supply medicines. This is the structural fact behind the consolidation of the market and it is what Defra has proposed to change.
No. The RCVS describes the Practice Standards Scheme as a voluntary accreditation for UK veterinary practices. Accredited practices are assessed every four years and may enter the PSS Awards, and the scheme runs at levels from Core Standards through General Practice to Veterinary Hospital. There is one concrete benefit worth weighing: because the assessment includes a medicines module meeting the Veterinary Medicines Directorate's requirements, PSS-accredited premises are exempt from a separate VMD inspection. PSS fees carry 20% VAT. None of that makes membership a legal requirement.
Premises registration. If your practice supplies or stores medicines you must register the premises on the Register of Veterinary Practice Premises, which the RCVS maintains on behalf of the VMD under the Veterinary Medicines Regulations. The fee is £38 per premises per year in England and Wales, exempt from VAT, renewing on 1 April, and every branch registers separately — a main site and two branches means three registrations and three fees. The triggers are broad and include any location receiving wholesale medicine deliveries. It registers a building for medicines purposes; it does not license the business or test who owns it.
It has been proposed, not enacted. Defra consulted on reform of the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 from 28 January to 25 March 2026 and received 6,219 responses. The proposals include a licence to practise for individuals and a licensing system for veterinary businesses, with enforcement action including potential loss of licence. The CMA separately recommended statutory regulation of veterinary businesses in its final report. But the summary of consultation responses has not been published, there is no draft Bill and no commencement date, and nothing is in force. Treat it as direction of travel rather than as a compliance obligation.
Not in law. Anyone may call themselves a veterinary nurse regardless of training or registration, which is one of the anomalies the current reform proposals address — the RCVS put statutory protection of the title to Defra in 2021. What is regulated is the work: Schedule 3 to the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 permits only registered and student veterinary nurses to carry out medical treatment or minor procedures not involving entry into a body cavity, on delegation from a veterinary surgeon employed in the same practice, where the animal is under the care of a registered veterinary surgeon.
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