The accountants who only
look after vets.

No. The Competition and Markets Authority published its final report on the veterinary services market on 24 March 2026, which ended the market investigation. It then has six months to put the binding Order in place, so the Order must be made by 23 September 2026 — that is the CMA's own drafting deadline, not a date by which any practice has to do anything. The draft Order went out for consultation on 21 July 2026 and that consultation closes on 20 August 2026. Not one compliance date in the draft is fixed: the text gives a period and then a bracketed month nobody has filled in, reading literally as “9 months [X June 2027]”. The obligations themselves land three to twelve months after the Order is made.

No. £21 including VAT for the first medicine prescribed in a consultation, and £12.50 for each additional medicine in the same consultation, are the figures in the final report. In the draft Order both sit inside square brackets, to be adjusted for inflation between 24 March 2026 and the latest monthly CPI figure available before the Order is made, and then indexed annually. So the number a practice will eventually have to work to is higher than £21 and is not yet published. The CMA found current charges start at around £10, with significant numbers of practices charging over £30 and some well above that.

On most of the remedies, yes. The CMA's news release says smaller veterinary businesses will have three months longer to implement most of the proposed changes, and a Small Veterinary Business is one with fewer than 15 first opinion practices or out-of-hours centres. But it is not uniform, and treating it as uniform is how a practice ends up late. On the prescription fee caps the gap is six months against twelve. On ownership information, and on the whole complaints package, there is no gap at all. And the out-of-hours contract notice provisions bite on the day the Order is made, for everybody.

Just you. The RCVS regulates individual veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses on its registers, and it has no statutory power to regulate the businesses they work in. Non-vets have been able to own a UK veterinary practice since 1999, and the Practice Standards Scheme is in the RCVS's own words a voluntary accreditation. The registration that is compulsory is of premises that supply or store medicines, on the Register of Veterinary Practice Premises, at £38 a year per premises in England and Wales, renewing 1 April, with every branch registered separately. Defra has consulted on reforming that, but nothing is in force.

The RCVS is taking on compliance monitoring and will charge a levy to veterinary businesses, sized by the number of first opinion practices you own. The CMA's current estimate is no more than £150 to £250 per practice to cover the RCVS's initial set-up costs, and £450 to £550 a year per practice for its ongoing costs. That sits on top of the £38 premises registration for each site. The larger cost for most practices is internal rather than external: building and maintaining a published price list by weight band, a parasiticide list, written estimates, itemised bills and a complaint log.

The 20% rate applies, but it is worth understanding why, because practices are often told it with more confidence than the source material supports. The VAT medical exemption in Schedule 9 Group 7 of the VAT Act 1994 covers registered doctors, dentists, opticians, pharmacists and other human health professionals. Veterinary surgeons are not within it, and no other relief reaches veterinary services — so the standard rate applies by the absence of relief rather than by a quotable HMRC sentence. Medicines are clearer: VAT Notice 701/15 para 9.4 says medicines are not covered by the zero rate even where administered in feed.

A fixed monthly fee, quoted for your practice after a free review and agreed before anything starts. There are no hourly rates, so nobody hesitates to pick up the phone, and there is no published price list on this site because the fee depends on the size of the practice, how many premises there are, whether we are doing the bookkeeping or reviewing work your own team does, and how many people need personal tax returns. A number invented before we have looked at any of that would be a guess dressed up as transparency.