How UK vet prices have changed over the last decade

The CMA's published investigation drew on industry pricing surveys, the regulator's own data requests to corporate groups, and consumer survey responses. The headline finding, repeated across the investigation's documents, was that the median UK vet consultation fee rose roughly 60% in the decade preceding the investigation, with regional variation but a consistent upward trend.

Out-of-hours surcharges, prescription medication margins, and dental care prices rose proportionately. Routine vaccinations rose less steeply but still well above general inflation. The CMA's report acknowledged that some cost increase was attributable to genuine input-cost inflation (staff wages, drug supply, energy, premises), but identified a substantial portion that was not.

The CMA's analysis identified four contributing factors:

Weak price transparency. Without published prices, consumers could not exert price discipline by switching to lower-cost alternatives. Practices faced limited competitive pressure on routine pricing.

Concentrated corporate ownership. The acquisition of independents by the six corporate groups gave each group market power in many local geographies. The CMA found that practices commonly priced above local independents post-acquisition.

Prescription medication margins. The investigation found medication dispensed by practices commonly priced materially above the same medication elsewhere, with pet owners typically unaware that alternatives existed via a written prescription.

Limited OOH choice. When pet owners needed out-of-hours care, the typical referral to a single OOH provider per geography limited their ability to choose on price.

The CMA's 2025 remedies act on the first three of these directly: price-transparency disclosure addresses weak transparency; ownership disclosure addresses opacity around corporate consolidation; and the prescription-medication and dispensing-fee remedies address the medication-margin issue. The OOH-choice issue is addressed indirectly via the OOH disclosure requirement.

The expectation set out in the CMA's report is that price-transparency disclosure will enable like-for-like comparison and put downward pressure on routine prices, while clinical decisions remain the responsibility of the vet and the pet owner. The remedies are not price controls; they are competition remedies.

Vet Cost Index will publish a national index of routine consultation fees, vaccinations, dental treatment, neutering, dispensing fees, and out-of-hours surcharges as coverage builds from 2026 onwards. Once we have two consecutive quarterly snapshots, the quarter-on-quarter movement is itself a citable indicator — the first measure of whether the CMA's remedies are achieving their intended effect.