Strategic Plan 2025 - 2029

Welcome to our new Strategic Plan – stronger together with you.

As the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS), we work to inspire confidence in veterinary care. We protect the public interest by ensuring animal health and welfare, and public health, are advanced through thriving, world-class veterinary professions.

Many share an interest in this outcome, and it works best when we bring people together to achieve it.

To that end, the focus of our new Strategic Plan is 'stronger together' and, on the following pages, we set out what we aim to achieve over the next five years, working with our four key stakeholder groups.

Download the RCVS Strategic Plan 2025-2029

If you are reading this strategy – whether you are a member of the public, a member of the veterinary team, a student, from within an organisation, government, media, or educational establishment, or part of the RCVS team or governance structure – you hold a stake in veterinary standards and animal health and welfare.

So, you have a part to play. 

We are stronger together.

The main purpose of the RCVS is statutory regulation. Alongside our statutory functions, we have an important role in helping vets and vet nurses to be the best that they can be.

This means that, as a royal college that regulates, we are uniquely placed to bring people together in support of our common purpose in a collaborative, proactive way: producing professionals fit to practise, and professions fit for purpose.

Our collaboration can be small and meaningful, around a particular veterinary standard, or global and existential, such as on important One Health topics that aim to improve the health of people, animals and the environment. Whatever form it takes, it is all valuable and valued.

Thank you to all those who have contributed to the development of this plan. Please continue to help us meet our ambitions, for the benefit of animal health and welfare, and public health.

As our founders put it: vis unita fortior – we are stronger together.

In the Strategic Plan

• About us
• Our values 
• About this plan

Structure

Each of the following sections focuses on our work with, and anticipated impact on, a different internal or external stakeholder group. Find out how our strategic plan will help us become stronger together with: 

• Veterinary professionals
• Animal owners and keepers
• Society at large
• Staff team and governance

Back to top