About Us

Dart Vale Veterinary Group is proud to be an approved member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Practice Standards Scheme.

As an accredited practice, we have passed an inspection carried out by an experienced veterinary surgeon focusing on a range of areas, including hygiene, health and safety, clinical governance and the facilities we provide, to name just few of the many criteria. The practice will be reinspected every four years and we will be subject to spot-checks in the meantime, so we have to keep on our toes. Due to the recent Totnes move our new surgery has not yet been re-inspected so is currently not certified, however, all our other surgeries remain accredited. We hope that our Totnes surgery will be inspected soon so that we can regain our status.

The Practice Standards Scheme is a voluntary initiative – not all practices are part of it yet. RCVS accreditation means that as a client you can rest assured that our practice offers a high quality of care – in those bits of the practice you can see and and those that you cannot.

The practice started by servicing the farming community in the area around Totnes in the 1950's. Derek Hair and Wilf Beaumont began their successful partnership with a practice in Castle Street, Totnes. The small animal work played a small part initially with operations taking place on Thursday evenings after the consults had been finished. Michael Webster and Jim Goodwin joined the partnership as it expanded to five branches around South Devon. During the 1980's the veterinary profession started to take small animal work seriously. Milk quotas, BSE and later foot and mouth depressed the large animal sector which meant that the small animal work became more important within the practice. In the past 10 years we have seen rapid growth in all of our 6 practices and we have increased our vet numbers from six to thirteen.

As a trusted and respected local veterinary practice we provide veterinary care for several local animal charities including Animals In Distress and also the R.S.P.C.A. Our vets staffed the R.S.P.C.A Welfare Clinic in Newton Abbot when it was open and we also provide routine care for strays brought in by the R.S.P.C.A Animal Collection Officers. We support these charities by offering discounted rates to them as we believe these charities provide a valuable local service rehoming hundreds of unwanted and neglected animals every year. Your support is also vital for them and if you would like to contribute to their work then you can donate online via their websites.

Prescriptions are available from this practice for animals under our care after one of our Veterinary Surgeons has assessed your animal. You may obtain relevent prescription only medicines categroy V (POM-V) from your veterinary surgeon or ask for a prescription and obtain these from another vet or pharmacy. This may not be appropriate if your animal is an in-patient or when immediate treatment is necessary. The general policy is to re-assess an animal requiring a prescription every 6 months.