OV invoicing for miscellaneous tasks and DNA packing and tagging
How to submit claims invoices to the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) if you're an Official Veterinarian (OV) working in England or Wales.
Applies to England and Wales
Official Veterinarians (OVs) in England and Wales must submit invoices to make claims for miscellaneous tasks and DNA packing and tagging.
This replaces the previous APHA self-billing system.
How to create and send invoices
OV practices must submit invoices monthly. After an invoice is submitted, the APHA veterinarian authorising the task must add a note to the relevant Sam record.
To ensure payments are made on time, invoices must include all completed services as well as the following information:
- unique invoice number
- practice details, including registered trading name with the address and VAT registration number in the letterhead
- date of visit
- County Parish Holding (CPH) number and farm or customer name
- details of the task and appropriate fee (headage or hourly as appropriate), including the number of animals or hours according to the scale of fees
- mileage being charged
- VAT (show this as a separate charge)
Where to send your invoice
Invoices should be emailed to FinanceEnglandServiceDelivery@apha.gov.uk.
The email subject line should contain ‘OV Miscellaneous Claim’ followed by the practice name.
Contact the Finance and Business Support Team on (0)20 802 65644 if you cannot email your invoice.
There is a separate process for OV claims for services carried out in Scotland.
Fees and mileage rates
Scale of fees
There is a visit cost of £52.12 and an hourly cost of £72.53 for the following work areas or tasks instructed by APHA:
- bluetongue, foot and mouth disease, glanders, parasitic mange, rabies, sheep scab, swine fever, swine vesicular disease, equine infectious anaemia, equine viral arteritis, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy
- quarantine examinations
- inspection of animals and poultry in markets
- importation or exportation of animals, including horses
- welfare visits or reports
For example: a visit of less than one hour would cost £52.12, a visit of one hour would cost £72.52, and a visit of 2 hours 30 minutes would cost £181.33.
Mileage rates
Mileage rates are £0.40 per mile, between 1 and 1,000 miles.
DNA packing and tagging fees
DNA packing and tagging can only be charged for when the owner of the animals in a tuberclin (TB) test is paying for the test. No mileage can be claimed on these tasks.
For DNA packing there is a cost of £3 per visit.
For DNA tagging there is a cost of £6.04 per animal.
Anything outside of these fees needs to be agreed before the task date with the Veterinary Head of Field Delivery (VHoFD) or Veterinary Lead Wales (VLW).