Privy Council agrees rise to RCVS fees

The Privy Council has approved a rise to the current annual renewal fees charged by the College of £24 for those practising in the UK, £12 for overseas-practising members and £4 for non-practising members in order to continue to fund a number of ambitious projects and make sure the College is fit for the future.

The approved fee rise will apply to the 2020-21 annual renewal fee for veterinary surgeons, including overseas-practising and non-practising veterinary surgeons and temporary registrants. These are due to be paid by 31 March 2020.

Increases will also be applied for those registering on or after 1 April 2020, including the restoration fee for those applying to re-join the Register.

In addition to being approved by Privy Council the fee rise had previously received approval from Lord Gardiner of Kimble, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Rural Affairs and Biosecurity at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, who recommended that the Privy Council adopt the Statutory Instrument allowing the rise to take place.

Lizzie Lockett, our CEO (pictured right), said: “While we appreciate that asking people for more money is never going to be popular, I would like to reassure the profession that the fee rise is both a necessary piece of financial future-proofing and will also help fund current projects and future initiatives stemming from our new Strategic Plan.

“Many of our existing projects such as the RCVS Leadership programme, the ViVet innovation project, the Fellowship and the Mind Matters mental health initiative, have an increasing workload, often due to popular demand, which requires additional resources – including staffing – to meet those needs. There is also increasing demand on some of our core regulatory functions such as our concerns investigation and disciplinary processes, including the Veterinary Client Mediation Service (VCMS), and our Education Department which is responsible for ensuring standards in an increasing number of educational institutions both domestically and internationally.

“Furthermore, there is lots of additional work on the horizon, much of which relates to improving and enhancing aspects of the profession and stems from our newly approved Strategic Plan, which will be published soon. For example, RCVS Council has just agreed an ambitious overhaul of the Professional Development Phase to help graduates better transition to life in practice; we are carrying out an increasing amount of work on understanding the barriers to diversity and inclusion in the veterinary profession: and, we are looking to relocate the College in order to be better able to accommodate the increasing number of staff and functions the work we do requires.

“In terms of future-proofing, we also need to make sure we have sufficient financial security for a potential decrease in the number of veterinary surgeons currently registered with us, as well as the number of veterinary surgeons joining the Register on an annual basis, that may arise when the UK fully leaves the EU at the end of the transition period in December 2020.”

The current levels of our fees are able to view on the fees page of our website. 

The new fee levels that will be introduced from 1 April 2020 will be uploaded to the website shortly.