Over 60% of UK veterinary practices are owned wholly or partly by six groups, against 10% in 2013. The CMA's final report puts numbers on the consolidation, on the price gap it produced, and on how few clients are aware of it — and the last of those is the commercial fact for an independent practice.
Article · 29 June 2026
The consolidation of UK veterinary practice ownership is usually described in adjectives. The CMA's final report of 24 March 2026 describes it in numbers, and they are worth having exactly right because almost every commercial decision an independent practice makes now sits against them.
Over 60% of UK veterinary practices are owned wholly or in part by six large veterinary groups. In 2013 the figure was 10%. The report attributes the change mainly to a significant number of acquisitions over a relatively short period of time. That is a market changing hands inside a decade.
The report names them: CVS, IVC Evidensia, Linnaeus, Medivet, Pets at Home and VetPartners. Their ownership structures are not the same, and the differences matter if you are on the receiving end of an approach.
Only Medivet and Pets at Home use UK-wide branding across all or most of their practices, which is why the other four are so much less visible to clients. Pets at Home operates a joint-venture model, with most practices co-owned with local vets. Medivet runs a partnership model for a number of its practices. Five of the six grew mainly by acquisition; Pets at Home expanded principally by opening new practices.
Five of the six — CVS, IVC, Linnaeus, Medivet and VetPartners — also own referral-only centres, and CVS and IVC own dedicated out-of-hours businesses. None of that vertical integration is affected by the remedies: the CMA declined to force divestment of online pharmacies, referral centres, crematoria or laboratories.
"Six groups" implies six comparable businesses. They are not remotely comparable, and the tail behind them is longer than most people assume.
| Owner | First opinion practices |
|---|---|
| IVC Evidensia — the largest | Over 900 |
| Linnaeus — the smallest of the six | Around 180 |
| The next largest owner after the six | 38 |
| 76% of veterinary businesses | One practice each — 20% of all practices |
Read the third and fourth rows together. The gap between the smallest of the six groups and the largest owner outside them is around 180 against 38. There is no middle tier of any size. And 76% of veterinary businesses own a single first opinion practice, which between them account for 20% of all practices in the country.
This is why the draft CMA Order draws its size line at 15 practices. A business with 15 or more first opinion practices and/or out-of-hours centres is a Large Veterinary Business; fewer than 15 makes it small. On these figures the line separates the six groups and a handful of others from everybody else.
Between January 2023 and July 2024 average prices at the practices owned by Medivet, IVC, CVS, VetPartners and Linnaeus were together 18.3% higher than at independent practices for consultations and treatments.
Put an illustrative basket on it. A set of consultations and treatments costing £100 at an independent practice averaged £118.30 across those five groups' practices, because £100 x 1.183 = £118.30. On a £600 course of treatment the same gap is £109.80, because £600 x 0.183 = £109.80.
Two pieces of context stop that being read as a straightforward verdict on quality. First, prices at veterinary businesses generally grew 63% between January 2016 and December 2023 against 32% CPI, so the whole market moved. Second, the CMA's own profitability work found a wide distribution among independents rather than a uniformly cheap-and-lean picture: in a sample of 36 small independent veterinary firms, EBIT margins over 2021 to 2023 ranged from -9% to +34%, with a weighted average of 11% — 15% in 2021, 12% in 2022 and 9% in 2023. The top sextile averaged 28% and the bottom sextile 0%, and 24 of the 36 firms saw margins fall across the three years. The average EBIT margin across the large groups was 14%.
So the groups charged more and earned a little more. Some independents earned considerably more than the groups did, and some earned nothing. Ownership is not the whole explanation of either price or profit.
This is the finding with the most direct commercial content, and it is the one least discussed.
Of the customers the CMA confirmed were using a large-group practice, only 22% at IVC and 33% at CVS knew their practice was part of a group, with 36% at another and 23% unsure. Set against that, where pet owners do care about ownership, more than two thirds prefer an independent practice.
Those two findings only look compatible because of the invisibility. A material group of pet owners prefers something they cannot currently identify. Net satisfaction on value for money reinforces it: 26% for large-group customers against 47% at independents.
Ownership information is one of the transparency remedies, and it is one of the two places where the usual "smaller businesses get three months longer" line does not apply.
Draft Article 5 requires ownership information on signage, premises, websites and communications, at six months from the Order for a large business and six months for a small one — no gap. So the disclosure lands on everyone at the same time. From that point a client standing in a waiting room can read who owns the practice, and a client comparing two practices online can read both.
Combine it with Article 7's comprehensive standard price list, priced by weight band, and the CMA's baseline that 84% of the practice websites it reviewed carried no pricing information at all. Ownership and price both become visible at once, in a market where a majority of the people who care about ownership prefer the independent option.
It declined to pursue divestments, and it decided that reducing or capping the level of practice ownership by large groups would be neither effective nor proportionate. There is no general price control beyond the written prescription fee, and no profit cap. The consolidation described above is therefore the market you are competing in, not a temporary state pending intervention.
Stop treating independence as a background fact and start treating it as a stated position. The CMA's evidence is that more than two thirds of the pet owners who care about ownership prefer an independent practice, and that most large-group clients do not know what they are using. Article 5 is about to remove the second half of that. A practice that says clearly who owns it, publishes its prices in the required bands, and can explain its pet care plan component by component is well placed for the comparison clients are about to be able to make.
Two cautions. First, the price gap runs both ways: if your prices are above the local independent average, a published list makes that visible too, so the pricing review comes before the publication. Second, the profitability spread in the CMA's own sample — -9% to +34% — is a reminder that independence guarantees nothing about margin. The practice profitability calculator puts your EBIT margin against that sample.
The pricing work itself is in the practice pricing guide, and the disclosure sequence is in the CMA remedies guide. If an approach from one of the six is what prompted the question, selling a veterinary practice covers what actually gets priced, and BADR at 18% covers what the proceeds cost you in tax. What the CMA chose to do instead of intervening in ownership is in what the CMA decided not to do.
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The CMA's final report of 24 March 2026 found that over 60% of UK veterinary practices are owned wholly or in part by six large veterinary groups, against 10% in 2013, and attributes the change mainly to a significant number of acquisitions over a relatively short period. The six are CVS, IVC Evidensia, Linnaeus, Medivet, Pets at Home and VetPartners. Behind them the market is very fragmented: 76% of veterinary businesses own only one first opinion practice, and those single-practice businesses account for 20% of all practices in the country.
No, and the spread is wide. IVC Evidensia is the largest with over 900 first opinion practices in the UK, while Linnaeus, the smallest of the six, has around 180. The next largest owner outside the six has 38. There is effectively no middle tier, which is why the draft CMA Order can draw a clean line at 15 first opinion practices and out-of-hours centres to separate a Large Veterinary Business from a Small one. Their ownership also differs: CVS and Pets at Home are listed, IVC, VetPartners and Medivet are private-equity owned, and Linnaeus is owned by Mars Petcare.
On the CMA's measurement, yes. Between January 2023 and July 2024 average prices at practices owned by Medivet, IVC, CVS, VetPartners and Linnaeus were together 18.3% higher than at independent practices for consultations and treatments. On an illustrative £100 basket that is £118.30. Context matters though: prices across all veterinary businesses grew 63% between January 2016 and December 2023 against 32% CPI, and the CMA's sample of 36 small independent firms showed EBIT margins from minus 9% to plus 34%. Ownership is not the whole explanation of either price or profit.
Mostly not. Among customers the CMA confirmed were using a large-group practice, only 22% at IVC and 33% at CVS knew their practice was part of a group, with 36% at another and 23% unsure. Only Medivet and Pets at Home use UK-wide branding across all or most of their practices, which explains a good deal of the invisibility. The finding that sits alongside it is that where pet owners do care about ownership, more than two thirds prefer an independent practice. Net satisfaction on value for money was 26% for large-group customers against 47% at independents.
Yes, once the Order is made. Draft Article 5 requires ownership information to appear on signage, at the premises, on websites and in communications. It is one of only two parts of the package where a small business gets no extra time: the lead-in is six months from the Order for both large and small businesses, the other being the complaints and mediation requirements. Since no Order has yet been made, no calendar date exists for this. What it means in practice is that ownership status stops being something a client has to research and becomes something they read.
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