About the practice

An independent practice, run by the people who work in it

Corvus Lane Veterinary has looked after the cats, dogs, rabbits and small pets of Ashfield Green from the same building since 1998. There are eleven of us. We are owned by two of our own vets, we answer to nobody else, and that shapes almost everything on this page.

What follows is an honest description of how the practice works: how it started, how it is run, what is actually inside the building, and who you are likely to meet. If you want the practical details instead — hours, fees, how to register — those are on the home page, and our address and directions are on the contact page.

How the practice started

The short version is that a joinery workshop went out of business and a vet with a small overdraft bought the lease.

Unit 7 was a joiner's workshop until the mid-nineties, and for most of that time the far end of Ashfield Green Business Court was somewhere you went to have a window frame made. When the workshop closed, the unit sat empty for the better part of two years. It had a concrete floor, a great deal of sawdust, one cold tap and a roof that leaked over what is now the cat ward.

The practice opened in the spring of 1998 with one vet, one nurse, a borrowed autoclave and an appointment book that was an actual book. The first year's client list ran to something under two hundred animals, a good number of whom were brought in by people who had walked past out of curiosity and wanted to know what had happened to the joiner.

Helena Marsh joined in 2001 and bought into the partnership in 2003 with a colleague who has since retired. The building was extended in 2006, when the theatre and the preparation area were added at the back, and again in 2015, when the cat ward was moved to the quiet side of the building and the small laboratory was fitted out. Both extensions were paid for out of the practice rather than borrowed against a sale, which took longer and was the right decision.

We now look after something in the region of four thousand registered animals. That number has been broadly stable for six years, which is deliberate. We have turned down offers to take over the client lists of practices that have closed, because a list you cannot see properly is a liability rather than an asset.

A rough timeline

1998	Practice opens in Unit 7. One vet, one nurse, two consulting hours a day.
2001	Helena Marsh joins as an assistant veterinary surgeon.
2003	The practice changes hands and becomes an owner-run partnership.
2006	First extension: sterile theatre, preparation area and a second consulting room.
2009	Sam Delacroix joins the nursing team; the first nurse-led clinics start.
2012	Digital radiography replaces the film processor. The darkroom becomes a store cupboard.
2015	Second extension: separate cat ward, isolation room and in-house laboratory.
2018	Twentieth year. Ultrasound added. The waiting room finally gets a cat shelf.
2021	Video consultations introduced for triage and follow-up appointments.
2024	Ward cameras installed, and the overnight monitoring stream offered to owners.

Why "Corvus Lane"?

There is no Corvus Lane. The original practice sign was made by the joiner's son as a favour, and he misread the handwritten note he had been given, which said "Corvid Lane" — the footpath behind the court, named for the rooks. Nobody wanted to tell him. The name stuck, the rooks are still there, and the sign is now framed in the corridor by the laboratory.

How we try to work

These are not aspirations pinned to a noticeboard. They are the things we argue about at practice meetings, and the things you are entitled to hold us to.

Time

Twenty minutes as standard

Most practices book ten or fifteen. We book twenty, and forty where the history is complicated. It costs us roughly a third of our potential appointment capacity and it is the single decision that most changes what a day here feels like.

A rushed consultation produces a diagnosis that fits the time available rather than the animal. Twenty minutes is enough to examine properly, ask the second question, and let an owner say the thing they were not sure was relevant — which, often enough, is the thing.

Handling

Low-stress handling

Every clinical member of staff has been trained in low-stress handling, and the cat ward has been rebuilt twice around it. We examine on the floor, in the carrier, on a lap or on a towel — wherever the animal is calmest. The table is a convenience for us, not a requirement.

If your pet finds coming here difficult, tell us before the appointment rather than after. There is a great deal we can do, and most of it costs nothing.

Inside the building

Unit 7 is a low brick building with blue doors at the far end of the court. It is not large. Everything below is behind one front door and on one floor.

The public part is the waiting room, with its separate raised bay for cats and small pets, and two consulting rooms off it. The second consulting room has its own door to the car park, which is used for end-of-life appointments and for patients who should not come through a full waiting room.

Behind that is the working half of the practice: a preparation area where patients are clipped, catheterised and induced; a sterile theatre; a dental suite with its own radiography; the laboratory; a dispensary; and four separate housing areas. The cat ward is on the quiet north side, away from the dog kennels and the compressor. There is a small-pet ward for rabbits, guinea pigs and ferrets, and an isolation room with its own ventilation and its own entrance from outside, so an infectious patient never crosses the rest of the building.

The 2015 rebuild taught us something that is worth passing on: the changes that most improved how settled our patients were had nothing to do with equipment. Moving the kettle out of the corridor beside the cat ward did more than any single purchase that year. So did fitting a door closer that shuts quietly, and putting the printer somewhere else.

Equipment

We hold digital radiography including dental views, abdominal and cardiac ultrasound, in-house haematology and biochemistry analysers, multi-parameter anaesthetic monitoring, a dental machine with its own radiography, fluid pumps and warming systems, and an endoscope for upper airway and foreign-body work. Images and reports can be sent electronically to a specialist radiologist, and usually come back within a working day or two.

What we do not have, we say so about. We are a first-opinion practice, not a referral centre. For orthopaedic surgery beyond the routine, for advanced imaging such as CT and MRI, and for a handful of specialist medical cases, we refer — and then stay involved in the follow-up rather than handing you over and disappearing.

Getting in and around

Step-free entrance, doors wide enough for a wheelchair or a large trolley, both consulting rooms on the ground floor, and an accessible lavatory off the waiting area. Two marked bays sit beside the door, and there are fourteen client spaces in front of the building.

If you need help getting a large or unwell dog out of the car, telephone from the car park and somebody will come out with a trolley. Full directions and a sketch map are on the contact page.

The people here

Eleven of us: four veterinary surgeons, four registered veterinary nurses, a practice manager and two reception and administrative staff. Everybody clinical is on the appropriate professional register, and the certificates are on the wall in the waiting room rather than in a drawer.

Dr Joachim Adeyemi

Veterinary surgeon

Joachim joined us in 2023 and works Monday, Thursday and Saturday, with a share of the daytime emergency cover. He came from a practice in the city and has a particular interest in dermatology — the itchy dog, the ear that never quite clears up, the cat that has overgroomed one flank for two years.

Skin work is slow, unglamorous and full of dead ends, and it suits somebody who is willing to keep a proper record and review it in three months rather than change everything each visit. He does.

He also handles a good number of our triage video calls, and is remarkably patient about asking owners to move the lamp.

Sam Delacroix

Registered veterinary nurse · Head nurse

Sam has been here since 2009 and runs the nursing team, the theatre list and, in practical terms, the whole building. He anaesthetises most of our surgical patients and monitors them from induction through to recovery, which is a great deal more skilled than the phrase "keeping an eye on them" suggests.

He leads our weight and mobility clinics and has an easy way of raising a difficult subject without making anyone feel judged. Several of our long-standing clients originally came in for something else entirely and stayed because of a conversation with Sam about a dog's waistline.

He is also responsible for the overnight ward rota and for deciding, each evening, which patients are settled enough for the monitoring stream to be worth offering.

Grace Whitlock

Practice manager

Grace looks after the appointment book, insurance claims, accounts, staffing and complaints. If something administrative has gone wrong, she is the person to speak to, and she would genuinely rather hear about it than not.

She has worked in veterinary reception for nineteen years and can tell from the tone of a telephone call whether the animal at the other end needs to be seen today. She is right considerably more often than she has any business being.

She is also our contact for data protection questions and for record requests, both of which are set out in the privacy notice.

Three further colleagues — two registered veterinary nurses and one administrator — work part-time and across the rota, and you will meet them too. Everybody's registration details are available for inspection at reception.

Standards, training and the boring parts

A veterinary practice is only as good as the things it does when nobody is watching: the checks, the logs, the second signature.

Continuing education

Every clinical member of staff has a training budget and protected time to use it, and the practice closes for one afternoon each quarter so that the whole team can train together. That is why you will occasionally find the phones on the emergency service on a Wednesday afternoon — the notice goes up in reception a month ahead.

Recent team training has covered analgesia protocols, rabbit anaesthesia, difficult conversations at the end of life, and the practical business of running a consultation over a video link without losing half of what you would have found with your hands.

Checklists and audit

We use a surgical safety checklist for every anaesthetic, no exceptions and no shortcuts for a five-minute procedure. We audit our anaesthetic records quarterly, our post-operative wound complications twice a year, and our antibiotic prescribing annually against national guidance. When an audit shows something we do not like, it goes on the agenda rather than in a drawer.

Errors

Things go wrong in every practice. What varies is whether they are recorded and discussed. We keep a significant-event log, we review entries at the monthly clinical meeting, and the culture is explicitly one of describing what happened rather than deciding who to blame. Where an error has affected your animal, you will be told about it directly.

Responsible prescribing

Antibiotic resistance is a genuine problem and prescribing habits are part of it. We follow national guidance on which antibiotics to reach for first, we culture where culturing is the right answer, and we will sometimes decline to dispense an antibiotic when the honest assessment is that it will not help. If that happens, we will explain why rather than simply saying no.

Where we refer

We are a first-opinion practice. For work that needs equipment or expertise we do not hold, we refer to a specialist centre, and we choose that centre on the case rather than on any commercial arrangement — we have none.

Advanced imaging: CT and MRI
Orthopaedic surgery beyond routine fracture work
Complex ophthalmic and neurological cases
Oncology where a specialist protocol is appropriate
Qualified behaviour work, where a medical cause has been excluded

Referral does not mean being handed over. We receive the reports, we stay part of the conversation, and the follow-up usually comes back to us.

Locally

A practice in a business court at the edge of a village ends up involved in a certain amount that is not strictly veterinary.

Community

The lost-and-found board

We keep the village lost-and-found board for animals, and we will scan any found animal for a microchip free of charge, whether or not you are registered with us. It is the single most useful free thing we do: a scanner, thirty seconds, and a good number of cats returned to owners who had given up.

If your pet has gone missing, telephone with a description and we will add it to the board and check it against anything brought in.

Practice

Working here

We advertise vacancies in the usual places and on the noticeboard in reception. We are a small team, so a vacancy is rare, but we are always glad to hear from experienced registered veterinary nurses and from vets who want a twenty-minute appointment book and no sales targets.

Speculative applications go to manager@corvuslanevet.example.com and are read by Grace, who replies to all of them.

If you are thinking of joining us

Registration is free, takes a few minutes and can be done over the telephone or at the desk. You do not need to give notice to your current practice or ask their permission, and we will request your pet's clinical history for you.

Telephone 01632 960 480 during reception hours, email reception@corvuslanevet.example.com, or read the step-by-step version on the registration section of the home page. Full contact details, parking and a sketch map are on the contact page.

Services

What we do, from routine consultations to dentistry and diagnostics. See the service list.

Remote appointments

Video triage, post-operative check-ins and the overnight ward stream. Read how they work.

Your information

What we hold, why, and for how long. Read the privacy notice.