The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) runs the Practice Standards Scheme, the accreditation framework a veterinary practice can join to have its premises, equipment and client information measured against a published set of standards. A practice's website sits inside that assessment wherever it is the place a client goes to find out how the practice runs, who is treating their animal and what happens if something goes wrong.

What the scheme reaches on a website

The scheme sets core standards that apply across an accredited practice, and it is the client information part of those standards that touches the website directly. That covers how the practice and its clinical team are identified, what a client is told about emergency cover outside normal hours, and what is published about fees and about raising a complaint. Each of those sits in its own section on this page, because each is checked against a different piece of guidance and dates on a different schedule.

What this page does and does not do

This page names what the Practice Standards Scheme requires a website to contain. It does not assess whether a particular practice's website meets those requirements, and it is not a substitute for reading the scheme's own published standards. Where anything on this page reads differently from current RCVS guidance, the RCVS's own guidance is the one to follow.

The parts of a website a regulator can actually reach are not limited to veterinary practices, and the general pattern is set out on the parts of a practice website a regulator can actually reach.

The practice name shown on the site

The website has to identify the practice by the name it holds on the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) Practice Standards Scheme list, and state that the practice is a member of the scheme where it is. If the practice trades locally under a different name, both names should appear together, so a reader searching the scheme's own list can match what they see on screen to what they see on the website.

Veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses are not the same registration

A veterinary surgeon and a veterinary nurse hold separate registrations with the RCVS, and the site has to describe each person by the one they actually hold. A veterinary surgeon is entered on the Register of Veterinary Surgeons and may use the letters MRCVS. A veterinary nurse is entered on the List of Registered Veterinary Nurses and may use the letters RVN. A job title on a staff page such as "vet" used loosely for someone who is a registered veterinary nurse creates exactly the mismatch a reader could check for themselves against the RCVS register.

Where this tends to slip

• A practice name changes after a merger or rebrand, and the old name lingers on the website while the new one appears with the scheme.
• A nurse's title is shortened to something that reads as though they hold a veterinary surgeon's registration.
• A staff photo or bio is updated before the registration line underneath it is checked against what that person currently holds.

The individual entries behind these titles, and how quickly they go out of date when someone joins or leaves, are covered on the staff page section of this site.

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) Practice Standards Scheme requires a practice to make clear how a client reaches emergency care outside normal opening hours. Where that cover is provided directly by the practice, the website has to say so. Where it is provided by a separate out-of-hours service or another practice under an arrangement, the website has to name that arrangement and give the client a way to reach it.

What the page needs to contain

A client looking at the site at nine in the evening needs a phone number that will actually be answered. If the out-of-hours provider is a separate organisation, the site should name it.

• The phone number to call outside normal hours
• Whether that call is answered by the practice itself or by a named out-of-hours provider
• Any circumstance in which the client is directed somewhere other than the practice

Where this tends to go wrong

Out-of-hours arrangements change more often than the pages describing them. A practice moves from covering its own nights to using a regional emergency service, or back again, and the phone number on the website is the one thing a worried client will actually dial. If that number reaches an arrangement that ended months earlier, the page is doing the opposite of what it's there for.

This page describes what the RCVS Practice Standards Scheme requires a veterinary practice website to say about emergency cover. It does not assess whether a particular practice's website meets that requirement, and the RCVS's own current guidance is the authority on the point. A practice unsure how its own arrangement should be described should check with the RCVS directly.

The staff page and this one tend to go stale for the same reason: something changed in the practice and the website wasn't the next thing updated. The annual review checklist covers this among the pages worth checking on a fixed schedule.

Fee information

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) expects a veterinary practice to make fee information available to a client before treatment starts, and its Practice Standards Scheme looks at whether a website tells a client how to find out what something will cost, whether that is a published price list or a route to a written estimate. Where a fee is named on the site and the amount charged is different, the published figure is the one a client may reasonably expect to pay. A separate page on this site, Fees, price lists and the expensive kind of out of date, covers what happens to a website when a fee changes and the page does not.

Complaints procedure

The RCVS requires a veterinary practice to have a written complaints procedure, and a client reading the website needs to be able to find out how to raise a concern and what happens once they do. The procedure sets out the steps a complaint moves through inside the practice and where it can go if the client is not satisfied with that response. Where a practice publishes its complaints procedure as a document, Policies, documents and the ones that have to be public covers what has to be kept available and current.

The RCVS's own current guidance on fee transparency and on complaints handling is the authority on both, and it is worth checking there directly.

A veterinary practice website holds several details that change whenever the practice changes, and each one lives in a different part of the site. A change in one place rarely triggers an update in the others, which is how a website ends up half current and half stale without anyone deciding that it should be.

Who is a vet and who is a nurse

A veterinary surgeon and a veterinary nurse are different registrations with different scopes of practice, and the staff page is where that distinction has to hold. Staff turn over, maternity cover comes and goes, and a nurse who qualifies as a vet during the year needs the page updated to match.

What the practice charges

Consultation fees, vaccination prices and the cost of routine procedures move more often than most other content on the site, usually once a year but sometimes mid-year when a supplier cost changes. The fees and price list page is the one a client is most likely to have open on their phone in the car park before they walk in, so a figure left over from the last price review is the one they will expect to pay.

Who covers emergencies out of hours

Out-of-hours arrangements change when a practice joins a shared emergency service, switches provider, or brings cover back in-house, and each of those changes means the phone number and the wording on the website need to change with it. A client ringing at midnight is reading whatever the site currently says.

Where a complaint goes

A complaints procedure names a person or a route, and both can move when a practice manager leaves or a group restructures its complaints handling. Left unchecked, the page keeps pointing a client toward someone who no longer holds that role.

None of these four are hard to update. What catches most practices out is that nobody owns the job of noticing when one of them has moved, which is the gap the annual review checklist is built to close.