The state of the UK veterinary workforce in 2026: what the data tells us

The 2024 RCVS Survey of the Professions found that 91% of vets and 93% of vet nurses describe their work as stressful. That will not surprise anyone. But the data behind that headline is worth looking at carefully, because it tells a more nuanced story than the figure alone suggests.

This piece draws on the 2024 Survey of the Veterinary Profession, published by the Institute for Employment Studies on behalf of the RCVS, alongside the Workforce Modelling Report published in December 2024. The aim is not to paint an alarming picture, but to give practice managers and teams an honest, grounded read of where the profession is, and what the evidence suggests makes a difference.

What is driving the pressure?

The 2024 survey identifies several overlapping factors. Stress was named as one of the top issues facing the profession by 49% of vet respondents, up from 47% in 2019. Client expectations were cited by 54%. The affordability of veterinary care, which has become a growing source of tension in the client relationship, rose sharply as a concern from 30% in 2019 to 46% in 2024.

In 2026, the regulatory context has added further complexity. The CMA’s final decision, published in March 2026, confirmed new requirements around pricing transparency and access to clinical records. For practices without a dedicated compliance function, these requirements land on top of a management role that is already carrying significant weight.

Less discussed, but worth naming: the cognitive and emotional load on practice managers themselves. When the systems around them are fragmented and the administrative demands are high, there is less capacity for the things that matter most: noticing when someone on the team is struggling, having the conversations that prevent small problems from becoming bigger ones, and building the kind of culture where people feel genuinely supported. The operational and the human are not separate issues.

Working patterns and hours

The survey executive summary reports that around two-thirds of vets work full time. Full-time vets work, on average, five hours per week above their contracted hours. For those in equine practice and veterinary schools, that gap rises to seven hours. These are not occasional overruns. They are the structural reality of how the working week is experienced.

On-call working affects 35% of respondents. For those in equine, mixed, and farm animal practice, the hours are particularly high. The mismatch between what is contracted and what is actually worked is one of the clearest indicators of where sustained pressure builds over time.

What the data tells us about retention

The proportion of vets intending to stay in the profession for five or more years fell from 79% in 2019 to 75% in 2024. Among those intending to leave, the survey asked why. Poor work-life balance was cited by 56%. Chronic stress by 54%. Not feeling rewarded or valued in a non-financial sense by 47%.

It is worth being precise: these figures come from those who said they intended to leave, not those who had already gone. But the consistency of the pattern across multiple surveys, and the nature of the reasons given, suggests something structural rather than incidental.

The top drivers are not primarily about pay. They are about how the working week feels, whether the role is sustainable, and whether people experience genuine recognition and support in the environment around them. These are not things that can be addressed by a pay review alone.

Is the pressure likely to ease?

The RCVS Workforce Modelling Report, published December 2024, projects that supply of vets in clinical practice will increase from 91% of total demand in 2023 toward 99% by 2035. That is an encouraging long-term picture for the profession.

It does not, however, resolve the near-term reality. The average full-time equivalent per vet is projected to fall as part-time working continues to grow. More vets on the register does not automatically mean more hours available in any given practice. And the structural pressures around workload, retention, and team wellbeing are not resolved by headcount projections. They are resolved, to whatever degree they can be, by decisions made inside practices.

What the practices managing this well tend to have in common

Looking across the data and what we hear from the sector, the practices navigating this period most effectively share a few consistent characteristics. They are not necessarily the largest or the best-resourced.

• Fair and predictable scheduling. Rota unpredictability appears consistently in what people describe when they talk about why they disengaged or left. A schedule built on accurate contracted hours, with visibility of leave and role constraints, does not resolve the underlying pressures of the role. But a rota that consistently feels uneven or last-minute adds friction to an environment that is already demanding. The rota planning guide on our insights page covers what fair and practical scheduling looks like in a veterinary context.
• Clear and accessible HR processes. When contracts, records, and policies are well maintained, practice managers spend less time on reactive administration and more time on actual management. In the context of the CMA remedies now coming into effect, practices with organised systems are also better placed to meet the new transparency requirements without significant additional burden.
• Development for the whole team, not just those with a formal requirement. The RCVS CPD requirement applies to vets and nurses. But the situations requiring non-clinical skill, handling a distressed client, managing a difficult conversation, supporting a colleague under pressure, belong to every role in a practice. Structured development for the whole team is one of the most consistently underprovided things we see. The case for non-clinical CPD sets out in more detail what this can look like in practice.
• Managers with capacity to manage. This is the foundation everything else rests on. A practice manager absorbed in fragmented admin has less ability to notice that someone is struggling, less time for the conversations that matter, less headspace to lead. Reducing that administrative load is not a productivity exercise. It is what allows good management to actually happen.

A note on what support structures can and cannot do

The pressures described in this data are human and structural. No platform or system resolves them. A practice where people feel unsupported, where the demands of the role consistently exceed what is sustainable, or where culture has been eroded by years of understaffing and overwork, will not be transformed by better scheduling software or a training platform.

What better tools and structures can do is create the foundations for things to improve. They reduce friction. They give visibility where there was none. They free up management time that can then be invested in the people and conversations that actually make a difference. That is valuable, but it is the starting point, not the destination.

The people working in veterinary practice are, by and large, doing so because they care about the animals and clients they serve, and about the colleagues alongside them. That commitment is evident even in the more difficult parts of this data. It deserves better support around it. Not as a management intervention, but as a straightforward recognition that people do better work, and stay longer, when the environment around them makes it possible.