RCVS publishes new Strategic Plan
Each ambition focuses on one of RCVS' stakeholder groups.
The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) has published its new strategic plan, which will run from 2025-2029.
The plan, titled Stronger together, with animal health and welfare at our heart, explores the values and strategic ambitions which will guide the College over the next five years.
In its latest plan, RCVS has set out four new updated values that will inform how it works with and for its key stakeholder groups. Its four values are now ‘compassion, collaboration, clarity and courage’.
The College has also published four strategic ambitions, with each ambition focusing on one of its stakeholder groups.
Its first ambition is ‘stronger together with veterinary professionals’. Through this strategy, RCVS hopes to champion accessible, team-based veterinary care in autonomous settings and support veterinary professionals to meet high standards.
As part of this ambition, it is hoping to review the Code of Professional Conduct and its supporting guidance and will also seek to achieve new veterinary legislation.
For its second ambition, RCVS has set out its responsibilities to animal owners and keepers. It hopes to improve animal and human welfare by improving access to veterinary care in a way informed by consumers and service users.
This would include communications with the public, with a focus on increasing transparency, agency and choice, as well as looking at ways to make veterinary care more accessible.
The third ambition addresses society as a whole, focusing on the links that the veterinary industry has with One Health and public health. RCVS says it will lead conversations on ‘challenging’ issues, encourage the next generation of veterinary professionals and ensure veterinary professionals linked with public health are well supported.
Finally, RCVS has outlined its commitment to its own staff and governance. It says it hopes to attract and retain a ‘diversity of talent and skills’ on its team to achieve its goals now and in the future.
To achieve this goal, RCVS says it will develop ‘infrastructure for success’, including new RCVS headquarters and new structures for finance, communications and digital. It will also seek to create a working culture with ‘sound values and supportive management’.
Lizzie Lockett, RCVS chief executive officer, said: “The overall theme of the plan recognises that there are many other individuals and organisations that have a stake in our mission to inspire confidence in veterinary care and protect the public interest by ensuring animal health and welfare, and public health, are advanced through thriving world-class veterinary professions.
“This is where the ‘stronger together’ comes in, recognising that, in our role as a royal college that regulates, we are very well placed to bring people and organisations together to meet our common purpose of improved animal health and welfare and public health in a collaborative, proactive way.”
The full Strategic Plan is published here.
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Joanne Webster, a professor of parasitic diseases at the RVC, has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).
