Veterinary Surgeon Salary 2026/27: ONS Pay and Take-Home
To practise as a veterinary surgeon in the UK you must be registered with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. ONS classifies vets as SOC 2020 unit group 2240, whose full-time median was £51,058 in ASHE 2025. The occupation is small enough that ONS suppressed both quartiles; the nearest published points either side of the median are the 40th percentile, £49,545, and the 60th, £52,164.
Typical pay & take-home
- Median gross
- £51,058
- ASHE 2025, 40th to 60th percentile (quartiles suppressed)
- £49,545–£52,164
- Take-home at median
- £40,171 England, no pension applied — use the salary calculator for your scheme.
At the median for this profession, you earn about 31% above the UK full-time median (£39,039), placing you between the 50th percentile (£39,039) and the 75th percentile (£54,009) of UK full-time earnings.
What influences veterinary surgeon (mrcvs) pay
There is no national pay scale for vets: pay is set by each practice or group. This page therefore anchors on the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, which put the April 2025 full-time median for veterinarians at £51,058. ONS did not publish reliable quartiles or a 90th percentile for the group, only the 40th (£49,545) and 60th (£52,164) percentiles, so it gives no official measure of what new graduates or specialists earn.
ASHE counts employee jobs only. A vet working as a self-employed locum, or as a partner taking a profit share, is outside the survey, so the published median describes employed vets rather than the profession as a whole.
At the median, with no pension contribution, a vet pays 40% Income Tax on about £788 of pay above the £50,270 higher-rate threshold. A 5% salary sacrifice pension brings taxable pay to about £48,505, below the threshold, so none of it is taxed at 40%.
Career progression
- ASHE does not publish vet pay by experience. These are the points it does publish for SOC 2020 2240, April 2025, full-time.
- 40th percentile: £49,545.
- Median: £51,058.
- 60th percentile: £52,164.
- Quartiles and the 90th percentile: suppressed by ONS as not statistically robust.
- Registration with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons is required to practise; specialist status is a further RCVS recognition, and ONS does not measure its effect on pay.
Frequently asked questions
- What is take-home for a vet on the £51,058 median?
- With no pension contribution, take-home in England in 2026/27 is about £40,171 a year, or £3,348 a month, after £7,855 Income Tax and £3,032 National Insurance. With a 5% pension contribution by salary sacrifice it is about £38,443 a year. A net pay or relief-at-source scheme gives a slightly different figure.
- Does a self-employed locum vet pay less tax than an employed vet?
- On the same figure, slightly less, because a sole trader pays Class 4 National Insurance at 6% and 2% instead of Class 1 at 8% and 2%. Taxable profits of £51,058 leave about £40,925 after £7,855 Income Tax and £2,278 Class 4, against £40,171 for an employee on the same gross. Profit is what is left after allowable costs such as indemnity cover and registration fees, and a locum has no employer pension contribution, sick pay or paid holiday, so compare day rates on that basis. No Class 2 is payable on profits above the £7,105 Small Profits Threshold.
- Why does ONS publish so little about vet pay?
- Because the occupation is small. The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings suppresses any estimate it judges not statistically robust, and for veterinarians that includes both quartiles and the 90th percentile. That is a data limitation, not a sign the pay is unusual.