Architects to be judged on their competence to deliver sustainability

After a year of chaotic governance during which the Chair and Chief Executive both resigned, the Architects Registration Board (ARB) have jumped the shark by issuing a document entitled a Strategic Statement on Climate Change and Sustainability. For those unsure as to what the ARB does (for our £119 per annum fee), it is a statutory body established by parliament under the Architects Act 1997 to regulate UK architects, and specifically (in ARB’s words) setting and enforcing the professional standards expected of UK architects.

The ARB publishes a 12-line code of conduct to which architects are expected to adhere. This includes the requirement that we… ‘Consider the wider impact of your work (Where appropriate, you should advise your client how best to conserve and enhance the quality of the environment and its natural resources)’. This wording seems to have served the profession well – after all, of the forty cases heard by the ARB’s conduct committee this year, I’m pretty sure that no breach of this particular rule was cited – not even once. Incidentally, the number of cases heard by the conduct committee has shot up this year from 26 in 2019 (18 in 2018, 13 in 2017). Are we architects behaving less professionally? Are domestic clients more aware of the complaints procedure or are the ARB policing us more diligently? That discussion is for another day. Back to the Strategic Statement on Climate Change and Sustainability and the ARB’s proposal to add more flesh to the bone of its code.

According to the consultation document, ‘The high level wording of the Code now needs expansion in order to provide sufficient guidance to architects on how to approach the challenges of the Climate Emergency’. It is not clear from the strategic statement just what guidance is to be expanded. A code of conduct that ‘needs expansion’ in this field should surely also guide architects not to clad buildings in flammable materials, or to design buildings that exclude all but the able bodied. Where does this end? Architects and any other designer for that matter, have plenty of guidance on how to address matters of design. Just read the Building Regulations and the Approved Documents, BSs, ENs and the wealth of standards that are out there. Admittedly, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has shown the danger of misapplying standards or gaming their requirements for commercial advantage and this is rightly an area of forthcoming reform. However, a code-based approach has served us well for four centuries in the UK and it has continually evolved to meet both the needs of the designer, the constructor and society at large. It will no doubt continue to evolve as we adapt building design to support the UK’s 2050 net zero target. The rules are already out there. We just need to follow them.

Whilst it’s not clear to me how far code guidance can go, the other ARB proposals covering education and the review and monitoring of competence are set to have far more significant consequences. Here we see ARB’s desire to grasp the nettle of competence: ‘Alongside the review of competence we will establish a new regulatory model for ensuring that the competences required of architects are maintained throughout their careers.’

Again I wonder why it’s taken the issue of climate change to force the ARB’s thinking in this? Admittedly, the current state of affairs whereby an ARB registered architect can pursue their future career for decades with no formal CDP or audit of their competency is frankly a joke. The code of conduct demands that… ‘You are expected to keep your knowledge and skills relevant to your professional work up to date’. That’s it. And unless an architect is also a member of the RIBA (and around one third of us are not), there is no check on how we choose to maintain our skills and knowledge (or indeed if we decide not to). Just as I noted above in discussing code guidance, it must be wrong to ring-fence sustainability from all of the other areas of knowledge demanded of the architect and so presumably this will lead to a full-blown ARB CPD system with minimum study hours and some form of checking system? It’s hard to see what other form the ARB’s ‘new regulatory model’ could take.

Whilst compulsory CPD for all architects is laudable it’s a stretch to imagine the RIBA reacting well to what it’s likely to see as the ARB overreaching its statutory remit. The RIBA’s CPD system is well established and widely used by chartered practices but what purpose would it serve if the ARB set up something of its own that is compulsory for all architects and not just the RIBA’s members?

2021 is set to be an interesting year for architects in the UK with the fall-out from Brexit changing how we work in Europe, further revelations due from the Grenfell Inquiry when it resumes in January and what now looks like a looming struggle for the rights to oversee architects’ competence. Watch this space and happy new year!