Dear TLCC Family

I personally wanted to say thank you for your incredible support for The London Cat Clinic during the very challenging past 18 months. Thank you for continuing to entrust us with the care of your feline friends.

We are a proudly independent practice, which means we are able to makes decisions quickly such as remaining fully open during COVID, with you being able to be in the clinic with your cats; to respond to your feedback by extending our opening hours in the evenings, weekends and bank holidays; introducing the UK’s first and only dedicated feline Ophthalmology clinic; and to start doing our own inpatient and 24/7 emergency cover (against nationwide trends and a staffing crisis!).

As we move into the next phase of recovering from the pandemic, I am writing to share some updates with you regarding our services and the costs of providing them. You may have received a text from us regarding a COVID-19 update; apologies for any confusion as that was sent in error and, in fact, refers to this more general email.

One of our core values at The London Cat Clinic is transparency and I want to be open with you about what we are doing and why.

  • We will have more appointments available during normal consulting hours as we have now lifted the ‘COVID blockers’ in between appointments – rest assured, our stringent cleaning and other COVID-related protocols will remain in place.
  • We are increasing the length of our non-routine consultations from 20 to 25 minutes, increasing the price to £80. Having listened to your feedback, and that of our vets, these new appointments, which are 10-15 minutes longer than the industry average, will help continue our outstanding care for your cats while helping reduce you and your cat’s waiting times in the clinic.
  • We have continued to pause new client registrations until our recruitment and training is complete to maintain the quality of our service to existing clients and patients.
  • We are increasing the costs of our other services by up to 12%. Any estimates that have already been provided will be honoured up to 4 November.

I understand price increases are challenging, given the pressures on household budgets, and I want to explain why this has become necessary.

Staffing shortages and recruitment challenges

  • You may have heard about the challenges faced by the veterinary profession, caused by a shortage of vets and nurses willing to relocate from the European Union and corporate practices driving up salaries in a candidate scarce-market
  • This has been compounded by people leaving the profession, or at least reconsidering their work-life balance, after the stress of working long-days in full PPE
  • There has also been an increase in veterinary workers being the target of verbal abuse from clients during the pandemic.
  • During the year, there has been a 10-15% increase in salaries required to retain and recruit suitably qualified individuals.

In addition to rising staff costs, we are introducing more favourable rotas for the team to address their work-life balance.  As a vet and an employer, I fully endorse this as I want my team members to feel supported, their worth recognised and to continue to provide you with the highest level of care at TLCC.

At The London Cat Clinic, we too have seen a rise in inappropriate behaviour towards our team. Fortunately, these incidents are rare, but I would please remind everyone to be kind and respectful to our teams who are always doing their best to help you - we are only human.

Operating costs

  • Our departure from the EU and other supply chain issues have also seen a dramatic increase in our operating costs
  • Some of our third-party suppliers passing on their cost increases to us which, in some cases, are 50-100% higher than 2020
  • We are also impacted by the increase in power bills, affecting households and businesses across the country.

As an independent practice, we don’t have bottomless pockets - these recruitment challenges in the profession, increases in operating costs beyond our control, and our ongoing commitment to your pets means we must pass on some of these costs to you. I haven’t taken these decisions lightly, want to be transparent with you and feel they are necessary to keep providing the highest quality level of feline medicine in the UK while growing our services appropriately.

With our enhanced services, longer opening hours, our new out of hours emergency services and new additions to our great team, we look forward to continuing to partner with you and being there for your feline friend’s nine lives and counting.

With kind regards

 

Dr Jeremy and TLCC team