2 Apr 2025
Senior figures defended both the current proposals and the organisation’s past record after they were challenged during the BSAVA Congress in Manchester.
Allister Webb
Job Title
Image: BSAVA
A planned overhaul of RCVS governance structures risks casting doubt over whether the organisation itself is “fit for purpose”, a major veterinary conference has heard.
Senior figures defended both the current proposals and the organisation’s past record after they were challenged during the BSAVA Congress in Manchester.
The exchange came only days after measures including a smaller board and parity between lay and professional membership were backed by the college’s council.
A delegate, speaking from the floor during a panel discussion on the ongoing Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation, argued the plans were moving the college towards a more “closed” system of regulation. He also claimed there was a consensus within the sector against replacing the current system of annual elections with a fully appointed model, as approved by the council in November.
The delegate added: “It does raise a question of whether the Royal College is fit for purpose.”
RCVS president Linda Belton insisted the measures were “not about becoming less transparent at all”, highlighting that the college was itself proposing the Professional Standards Authority should oversee its work.
Although the college has previously stressed elections will continue until new veterinary legislation is passed, Dr Belton also insisted change was necessary because the current regulatory structure was “unlikely” to be accepted within government now.
She said: “We are independently regulated, as opposed to regulated by government.
“I think for the profession, keeping an independent regulator is something that is good for us and keeping the veterinary voice on our regulatory governance body is a really good thing. That’s what we want to look towards doing.”
The college’s position was also supported by BVA junior vice-president Rob Williams, who said it was trying to prevent change from being imposed on both itself and the professions.
He said: “It’s a game, effectively, and what they’re trying to do is work within the rules of the game to preserve as much of the college as they can without it being completely taken out of their hands.”
Dr Williams also questioned the wider importance of maintaining council elections because of repeatedly low turnout levels.
Although more vets did vote in the 2024 elections than each of the previous two years, just more than four-fifths still did not participate.
The floor speaker argued the broad lack of engagement demonstrated the need for an external review of the sector’s regulation and questioned where the college had been as the nature of the sector changed.
But Dr Belton said the college had never been able to directly regulate practices, a key part of its reform agenda, and previous rules that limited practice ownership to vets had come to be regarded as “anti-competitive”.
She said: “What we then needed is the new legislation to allow us to do that regulation of veterinary businesses and this has been asked for since long before the CMA came in.”
