Vet prescriptions and the new fee cap

If your pet takes medication long-term — for arthritis, a heart condition, skin allergies — the most effective way to cut the cost is a written prescription: ask your vet for one and buy the medicine from any registered pharmacy, often for far less. From March 2027, the fee for writing one is capped at £21.

The right you already have

You can ask for a written prescription for most prescription medicines once your vet has examined your animal — you’re paying the practice for the clinical decision, not the medicine itself.

The gap can be substantial. The CMA found significant mark-ups on in-practice dispensing. For common long-term medicines, the online price can be a fraction of the practice price — often saving several times the prescription fee.

Two rules of thumb:

• Long-term medication: almost always worth pricing up a written prescription. Repeat prescriptions typically cover multiple supplies for up to six months, so one fee spreads across many purchases.
• One-off or urgent medicines: usually better bought at the practice. Your animal starts treatment immediately, and the saving on a single short course rarely justifies the fee and the wait for delivery.

What the CMA is changing

The CMA’s investigation concluded that this right wasn’t working in practice: many owners didn’t know it existed, and prescription fees were often high enough to cancel the saving. Two remedies address that directly:

1. A fee cap: writing a prescription will cost at most £21 for the first medicine, and £12.50 for each additional medicine. Expected from March 2027 for the large groups (15 or more sites) and September 2027 for smaller practices.
2. A duty to tell you: practices will have to make clear that you can take a prescription elsewhere, rather than leaving you to discover it.

Until the cap bites, fees remain the practice’s choice — so ask what yours charges. It’s also a useful question when choosing a new practice. The full remedies package — price lists, ownership disclosure, itemised estimates — is covered in our CMA reforms guide.

How to actually do it

1. Ask at the consultation — “Could I have a written prescription for that?” No justification needed.
2. Compare prices at one or two VMD-registered online pharmacies and your local pharmacy, including delivery.
3. Check the maths for your case: (practice price) vs (pharmacy price + prescription fee ÷ number of supplies it covers).
4. Order ahead — post and delivery take days, so don’t run the current supply down to zero first.
5. Use VMD-accredited retailers only — see the FAQ below on buying safely online.