Guide
How to find out who owns your vet
Around 6 in 10 UK vet practices now belong to a corporate group — often keeping the local name above the door. Here are four reliable ways to check who really owns yours.
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Most pet owners assume the vet with a local name and a familiar team is locally owned. Often it isn’t. Around 60% of UK veterinary practices belong to a corporate group, up from about 10% in 2013 — and acquired practices usually keep their original name. Here are four ways to check, fastest first.
1. Search our directory
The quickest route: search for your practice by name or postcode. Every record shows the ownership verdict — independent, corporate (with the parent group), or non-profit — along with the evidence behind it and when it was last verified.
If you know the brand but not the specific practice, our who owns…? pages cover the trading names you’ll actually see on the door — for example, Vets4Pets practices are franchise-style joint ventures operated under Pets at Home.
2. Check the practice website’s small print
Practice websites rarely name their owner on the homepage. Check the footer or the “legal” / “terms” page:
- Look for a registered company name and number at the bottom of the page. If the company name doesn’t match the practice name, that’s your first clue.
- Check the privacy policy — it often names the parent company as the “data controller”.
- “Part of the X family” wording is the soft way groups disclose ownership.
From December 2026, larger veterinary groups must state their ownership clearly under the CMA’s reforms (smaller providers have until March 2027), so this step will get easier — see our guide to the CMA reforms.
3. Look the company up at Companies House
Every UK company’s filings are free to view at Companies House. Search the registered company name from the website footer, then open “Persons with significant control” — this names who ultimately owns or controls the company. For corporate-owned practices this typically leads up a chain of holding companies to the group (and often, above that, to a private equity firm). Two or three clicks up the chain is usually enough to reach a name you’ll recognise from our parent companies pages.
4. Ask the practice directly
A perfectly fair question at the front desk: “Is this practice independently owned, or part of a group?” Most practice teams will answer straightforwardly. If the answer you get doesn’t match what our directory says, let us know — reader reports are one of the ways we catch ownership changes early.
What the answer tells you
Ownership is a fact, not a verdict — it shapes pricing, mark-ups and referral routes, not the skill of your vet. For the full comparison, see independent vs corporate vets: what the data says.
Frequently asked questions
Why doesn't my vet's website say who owns it?
Historically there was no requirement to disclose ownership, and many acquired practices kept their original name and branding. That is changing: the CMA's reforms make ownership disclosure mandatory, with larger groups required to comply first — see our CMA reforms guide for the deadlines.
Is my vet corporate if it still has the founder's name?
Possibly. Corporate groups usually keep the local name after an acquisition, so the branding tells you very little — check the practice's 'legal' or 'about' page footer, or look it up in our directory.
Does it matter who owns my vet?
It can. Ownership doesn't determine the quality of care — many corporate practices employ excellent clinicians — but it can influence pricing, mark-ups and referral routes. The CMA found pet owners often don't know who owns their practice, and that this weakens competition on price and choice.
How reliable is your ownership data?
Every practice record shows its source and confidence level. We cross-check practice websites, Companies House filings, charity registers and CMA disclosures, and our methodology page explains exactly how each claim is verified. If we got something wrong, you can report it and a human reviews every correction.