The UK veterinary services market affects millions of households. Around half of UK homes own a pet, and for many families, veterinary care is not an optional expense but an essential part of everyday life. When costs rise, the impact is immediate and often unavoidable.
The scale of the issue is difficult to ignore. The market is estimated to be worth between £6.3bn and £6.7bn, with prices rising by around 63% between 2016 and 2023. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has suggested that limited transparency alone may have cost consumers up to £1bn over five years. Many pet owners report not receiving clear pricing information before treatment, and in some cases, only discovering the full cost once care has already begun. At the same time, ownership structures are often unclear, particularly where large corporate groups operate under local branding.
The CMA’s response is to make the market more transparent. Veterinary practices will be required to publish prices, disclose ownership, and provide clearer treatment estimates. Comparison tools are also expected to make it easier for consumers to shop around.
The assumption is simple enough: if people have better information, they will make better choices, and competition will follow. But this depends on one key assumption that people can easily switch.
Veterinary care is local and often urgent. Pet owners do not typically travel across towns or cities in search of a lower price, particularly when treatment is needed quickly or forms part of ongoing care. They register with a nearby practice, build familiarity over time, and rely on continuity of treatment. Switching is possible, but rarely straightforward. It involves transferring records, re-registering, and in some cases restarting a relationship of trust. In emergencies, it is not a realistic option at all.
In reality, many consumers are far less mobile than the model of competition assumed by the reforms. The ability to “shop around” exists in theory, but is often limited in practice. And where people cannot easily switch, better information does not necessarily lead to lower prices.
Where only a small number of practices operate within a local area, and where prices are visible, businesses can observe and respond to each other’s pricing with little risk of losing customers. Over time, prices may begin to move together rather than apart. Instead of undercutting, providers may converge around similar levels.
This is not a speculative concern. It is a familiar pattern in markets with few suppliers, repeated interaction and stable demand. Veterinary services exhibit many of these features.
The CMA also proposes measures to facilitate the online purchase of veterinary medicines, including a £21 cap on prescription fees. While this sounds like a win, it underestimates the immediacy of treatment. Pet owners typically require medication promptly, often for multiple conditions requiring separate prescriptions. Even if capped at £21, a course of three prescriptions could easily amount to £63 or more, rendering the online alternative economically unattractive once delivery times and urgency are considered.
Furthermore, no parallel prescription-fee regulation exists elsewhere in Europe. In other jurisdictions, veterinarians freely issue prescriptions as part of the consultation, without a distinct fee.
There are also signs that competitive pressure is already weak. Routine procedures in the UK, such as a booster vaccine (£75 in the UK versus €45 in Europe) or a heart scan (£1000 versus €130), suggest that the UK market operates at a substantially higher price level, independent of input costs. The persistence of these differences suggests that prices are not effectively constrained.
Once the market structure is taken into account, a clearer picture emerges. Veterinary services are geographically segmented, with a limited number of providers in each local area. Consumers face practical barriers to switching, and providers interact repeatedly within the same catchment areas. These are conditions in which competition may struggle to operate effectively.
The CMA’s reforms will make the market easier to understand. Prices will be clearer, ownership more visible, and consumers better informed. That is a worthwhile outcome. But clarity is not the same as competition. If the underlying problem lies in the structure of local markets rather than the absence of information, transparency alone is unlikely to reduce prices in any meaningful way. It may simply make an expensive market easier to navigate without making it more competitive. For the millions of households who depend on veterinary care, that distinction is not abstract. It is the difference between knowing the price and being able to do something about it.
