The vet fee reform pet owners were promised takes a year to land

On 23 September 2026, the biggest vet groups in Britain were given three months to publish a standard price list. The smallest practices, mostly independents, were given six.

A reform timetable split by practice size is not the same thing as a reform that has actually arrived.

The CMA’s own compliance guidance sets out the staggered run of dates behind that split. Larger groups, those running fifteen sites or more, had until December 2026 to publish basic price and pet care plan information. Independents had until March 2027 for the same duties.

Written estimates for treatment over £500, and itemised bills for every invoice, land far later again: June 2027 for the larger groups, September 2027 for everyone else. The capped prescription fee, £21 for the first medicine and £12.50 for each one after that, follows the same split: March 2027, then September 2027.

The CMA’s own press release explains why the Order exists at all. Fewer than 40 per cent of practices publish prices online today. Fewer than half of pet owners got a price before non-routine treatment, and only 29 per cent of those got it in writing.

Hold those two facts together. The information a pet owner needs before they say yes to treatment is the first thing to arrive. The information an insurer needs to price what vets are actually charging, the itemised bill, is the last.

More than 70 per cent of pet owners buy long-term medication from their own vet practice, even though many could save £200 or more a year buying the same drugs online, the CMA found. That gap has been visible since March. It stays open, for the largest practices, until next March, and for everyone else until next September.

It is the oldest trick in retail: put the price list in the window, settle the real bill at the till, and hope nobody holds the two up to the light at the same time.

Pet insurers that quote a loss ratio against today’s vet fee data are quoting against a market that has not finished changing shape. I would not sign off a 2027 pricing assumption on 2026 data, and nobody in our industry should pretend they can, not until the itemised bill becomes routine rather than a date on a compliance calendar.

The practices furthest from compliance are not hiding anything. They are working through a timetable the CMA itself phased by size, and the CMA’s own numbers show how far there was to travel: fewer than four in ten practices with a public price list, fewer than three in ten customers given a price in writing before treatment that was not routine.

What changes for a claims handler, or for anyone pricing pet cover for next year, is not today’s average vet bill. It is knowing which part of that bill is still a guess and which part is now a number somebody has to write down and hand over. Right now, most of the country’s vets are still only required to do the first.