If you run an independent vet practice, you’ve probably already heard about the CMA’s final report. If you haven’t, here’s the short version: after a two-year investigation into the veterinary sector, the Competition and Markets Authority published its decision on 24 March 2026, and a legally binding Order is due by 23 September 2026. Large veterinary groups will have to comply first. Independents get a bit longer, into early 2027 for some of the detail, but the direction is the same for everyone.
The headline changes: standard price lists, a price comparison website, clearer disclosure of who actually owns a practice, and a capped prescription fee of £21 (£12.50 for any further item at the same consultation). All sensible, all aimed at giving pet owners more information.
Which is exactly the point. More information means easier comparison. And easier comparison means the practices that only have a transactional relationship with their clients, see them, treat the pet, send the invoice, repeat, are the ones most exposed when a client can pull up a comparison site and see three other practices nearby at a lower price.
A comparison site can show price. It can’t show that you remembered
No website is going to capture that your nurse remembers a dog’s name, or that the vet noticed a limp last time that turned out to matter. That relationship is real and it’s worth something, but only if the client is reminded of it often enough to value it over a few pounds saved elsewhere.
This is the part that gets missed in most of the advice doing the rounds about the CMA changes, which is mostly aimed at the pricing and compliance side. Getting your price list compliant is necessary. It is not what keeps a client. What keeps a client is being the practice they think of first, and that takes more than one good appointment a year to build.
Why retention matters more than it used to
It is well understood across most service businesses that keeping an existing client costs less than winning a new one — fewer marketing pounds, no onboarding friction, no first-visit nervousness to manage. None of that has changed because of the CMA. What’s changed is the downside of getting retention wrong. Before, a client who drifted away usually drifted to another local practice they vaguely knew of. Now they can drift to whichever practice on the comparison site looks better value that month. Inertia used to do some of the retention work for you. It’s about to do less.
That doesn’t mean panic. It means the practices that already have a deliberate way of staying in touch, not just at the annual reminder, but across the gaps, are the ones who’ll feel the September deadline as a non-event rather than a scramble.
Three things worth doing with post, not just email
Automated appointment reminders
Triggered straight from Merlin or Provet. A physical reminder that doesn't get lost in a promotions folder.
Win-back letters
Triggered after 9–12 months of no visits. Reaches the clients closest to leaving, before they've gone looking elsewhere.
A physical retention pack
Not a PDF. Sits on the counter or in the kitchen as a standing reminder of who the client's vet is.
Post still gets opened, and it doesn't look like a bill — unlike the inbox, which is already full of insurer, food brand and pharmacy reminders.
What this actually costs to run
A quarterly mailing programme to a practice’s existing client list, appointment reminders plus a win-back layer for lapsed clients, is a modest spend relative to what one retained client is worth over the lifetime of their pet. For a full breakdown of what print, postage, and list handling actually cost, see How much does a direct mail campaign cost in 2026?. The short version for a vet practice’s client list: this is closer to a few hundred pounds a quarter than a few thousand, because you’re mailing people who already know you, not a cold list.
Get this running before September, not after
The sensible order of operations is: get the retention side sorted while you’re also sorting price-list compliance, not after. By the time the Order is in force and a client has already used a comparison site once, you’re trying to win them back instead of keeping them in the first place. Long client relationships don’t happen by accident, they happen because someone in the practice decided to stay in touch on purpose, on a schedule, before there was a reason not to.
If you want to see what a proper retention pack for a vet practice actually looks like, appointment reminders, win-back letters, and how it ties into Merlin or Provet, we’ll put one in the post for you, free, no form to fill in beyond an address. We don’t mark up the postage on it either.