RCVS Stanley: How the PSS Online System Works

What Stanley actually is

If you have joined the Practice Standards Scheme, or you are thinking about it, Stanley is the system you will spend your time in. The RCVS describes it plainly: "Stanley is our online system for the Practice Standards Scheme (PSS)."

That undersells it slightly. Stanley is not a document repository bolted onto the scheme — it is where the scheme happens. The RCVS calls it "the central point of communication between practices, assessors and RCVS staff," and the system's own front page describes it as "the IT system of the RCVS Practice Standards Scheme (PSS), taking you through the accreditation and/or Awards process."

For a practice manager, that means the application, the evidence, the assessor correspondence, the findings and the follow-up all live in one place. If your PSS record is in a shared drive and Stanley is something you log into twice every four years, you are working against the grain of the system.

Logging in — the part that catches people out

Stanley runs on MyRCVS credentials, and the way that works changed on 24 July. Access is the single most common problem practices hit, and it is worth being precise about it — because the RCVS's own pages do not currently say the same thing.

The current position, from Stanley itself. The system's front page states: "From the 24th of July the way you log in to Stanley has changed," and "You can access Stanley using your MyRCVS account details." The RCVS describes the same consolidation on its new MyRCVS account guidance: "VetGDP, 1CPD, Stanley, and the RCVS Academy are now all accessed through MyRCVS using a single login." So the account you sign in with is an individual MyRCVS account.

An older RCVS page still describes the previous model. The RCVS's Stanley page continues to say "You can log in to Stanley using your practice's MyRCVS details" and that "your personal MyRCVS login won't work for Stanley – you must log in as your practice." That describes the arrangement before the July change and has not been reconciled with the newer guidance. Work from Stanley's own front page and the new MyRCVS account page, and if the difference matters to your case, ask the RCVS PSS team rather than guessing.

What both agree on is the thing that actually blocks people: the role. Having an account is not enough on its own. Stanley states: "To access Stanley, you must be assigned as a 'PSS Administrator' (PSS Lead) in the system," and "If you do not have this role, your Practice Administrator can assign it to you." The RCVS uses the fuller name for the same role: "To access Stanley, you must be assigned as a 'Practice Standards Scheme (PSS) Lead' in the system." If the person who held it has left, nobody at the practice can get in until it is reassigned. Worth checking now rather than six weeks before an assessment.

Three practical consequences:

1. Treat the PSS Lead role as a named responsibility with a named deputy, not an account that happens to sit with whoever set it up.
2. Add "reassign PSS Lead" to your staff-leaver checklist, next to key return and system access removal.
3. Log in once a quarter even when nothing is due. A login that fails in a quiet week is an annoyance; a login that fails the week evidence is due is a problem.

What you can do inside Stanley

Two things, according to the RCVS. Practices already in the scheme "can use it to manage the assessment process and get step-by-step guidance on PSS requirements." Practices outside it "can use it to apply to the Scheme."

The step-by-step guidance is the underused half. Stanley does not just collect your evidence — it tells you what each standard expects before you submit anything. Practices that treat Stanley as a submission portal do the interpretation work themselves and then discover at assessment that they interpreted it differently from the assessor. Practices that read the guidance in the system first submit less and get asked for less.

Where Stanley sits in the scheme

The Practice Standards Scheme itself is "a voluntary accreditation for UK veterinary practices". Nobody makes you join. What makes it feel mandatory is that clients, insurers and referral partners increasingly expect it, and that most of the evidence it asks for is evidence you are legally obliged to hold anyway.

The RCVS states that "veterinary practices are assessed every four years." Four years is long enough that the assessment stops feeling imminent, which is exactly why practices end up assembling evidence in a fortnight. The accreditation tiers run from Core Standards (small animal, equine, farm animal) through General Practice and the emergency service clinic categories to Veterinary Hospital. Accredited practices can additionally enter the PSS Awards to, in the RCVS's words, "showcase excellence in one or more specialist areas of your practice."

If you are working out where your practice currently stands, our RCVS PSS readiness checker walks the Core Standards evidence areas and flags where the file is thin.

The four-year problem

Here is the pattern that turns a manageable scheme into a scramble.

Assessment happens. Findings are closed. Stanley goes quiet. Over the next three years the practice hires eleven people, replaces an autoclave, changes waste contractor, updates six SOPs and reviews its risk assessments twice — none of which touches Stanley, because nothing in Stanley is asking for it. Then the next assessment window opens and someone has to reconstruct three years of evidence from memory, email and a filing cabinet.

Stanley is not the cause of that. Stanley is where the gap becomes visible.

The practices that find PSS assessment routine are the ones keeping the evidence current continuously rather than retrospectively — training records updated when someone completes CPD rather than when an assessor asks, SOPs version-controlled as they change, equipment maintenance certificates filed on arrival, risk assessments reviewed on a schedule rather than on a deadline. When the window opens, the work is transcription rather than archaeology.

What to do in the next month

• Confirm who holds the PSS Lead role, and who takes it if that person leaves
• Log into Stanley and check the login change has not locked you out
• Read the step-by-step guidance for two standards you are least confident about, before you next touch the evidence
• Find your assessment date and count backwards — if it is inside twelve months, our guide to preparing for a PSS assessment sets out the six-month, three-month and one-month sequence
• Note which evidence areas are maintained continuously and which are reconstructed. The reconstructed ones are where findings come from

Stanley rewards a practice that keeps its compliance evidence current. It exposes one that does not. That is not a criticism of the system — it is the reason the system exists.

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VetComply keeps RCVS PSS evidence, H&S, COSHH, medicines and CMA obligations current in one place, so a PSS assessment window opens on a file that is already up to date. Join the waitlist for early access.

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This is general guidance based on RCVS published scheme material. The RCVS is the authority on what the Practice Standards Scheme requires of your practice — check your own standards and assessment record in Stanley, and contact the RCVS PSS team where the requirement for your practice type is unclear.

Sources:

• Using the Stanley system — RCVS (pre-dates the 24 July login change)
• Using your new MyRCVS account — RCVS
• Stanley — RCVS PSS System
• Practice Standards Scheme — RCVS