Fees. I’ll be blunt; I’ve been nervous about approaching this topic. The most significant shift in this area – the abolition of mandatory fee scales – happened eight years before I was born. Fees are also an emotive topic, shrouded in the touchiness that always accompanies discussions of money in our culture.

A couple of brief caveats. I have a limited word count so this is not an exhaustive examination. I also can’t touch on architects’ wages. Though they’re inextricably tied to fees I just don’t have space to consider this properly. Caveats firmly in place, let me get on with it!

Fees are now a bit of an enigma. Rumours swirl and some publications and agencies have attempted to publish fee surveys. However, information is patchy, and surveys are usually from a small, self-selecting sample and therefore of limited value statistically speaking. One friend told me of an unethical but practical part III tutor who, as he saw it, had found a way to overcome this problem. He admitted to his students that he had little interest in teaching them – he had mainly taken the job to harvest their PEDRs and case studies for fee information.

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