While we are renovating our HQ at Portland Place, we must also renovate our profession

Architecture is in crisis. Outside of the top 100 firms, it is all too plain to see: low fees, low salaries, poor diversity, loss of status, the rise of design and build (D&B) and young people leaving the profession in droves. The profession is at a low ebb and needs a reboot.

At RIBA we see this only too clearly and we have pulled together a team to take affirmative action on a major project: Towards tomorrow’s architecture.

Where do we start? At the beginning. Our lauded seven-year course is hopelessly outdated and graduates take an average of nearly 10 years to get to registration and chartered membership. We are like boiled frogs – we are so used to the minimum seven year course, we don’t complain.

But it is a broken system, terrible for student debt and bad for inclusion, in particular gender and socio-economic diversity.

We need a five-year vocational course to registration and chartered membership. Of course there should be many routes to qualification, but a five-year route would deliver fully qualified architects in our offices by the age of 23.

But two crucial parts of making this a success means a fair portion of the course must deliver skills that are useful in an office, particularly construction skills. And we must ensure that graduates have a reliable, meaningful experience in practice. We will work across the sector to help address these challenges.

Next, we envisage a raft of specialist qualifications, or registers, to upskill the individual and the practices they work in. Building on our conservation and principal designer registers, new specialisms could focus on specific skills such as project management, planning, or facade design; or they could be sector-specific – establishing experts in healthcare, offices, education or life sciences.

The lack of business skills in the profession and fee guidance for clients has produced an impoverished profession, sometimes resulting in poor service for clients

Specialist qualifications would not only lead to greater expertise, but would improve the marketability of practices, and then in turn drive up fees and salaries. The concept of a RIBA university, to deliver these courses, in partnership with others is in discussion.

We then come to fees. At present it is a race to the bottom. The lack of business skills in the profession and fee guidance for clients has produced an impoverished profession, sometimes resulting in poor service for clients.

We want to bring back fee information – and we are discussing how this is could be possible with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

To support business skills we will not only bring in short courses on this for architects, but are discussing a part-time Masters in Business Administration for Architects (MBAA) with one of our leading universities, for mid-career architects.

The plan also, of course, includes securing reserved activities for architects, which we are already progressing through our repeal, reserve and regulate campaign. It is something I fully believe we can achieve. If we make planning or building control applications limited to suitably qualified professionals, we will deliver consumer protection by ensuring quality buildings, alongside a more guaranteed workload.

It will be no surprise to see that planning and procurement reform are also on this list. Despite seeing some positive changes recently, our planning system continues to be slow and burdensome.

RIBA’s November 2025 Future Trends report starkly illustrates this point, with 80% of architectural practices surveyed having experienced project delays due to planning, with 40% delayed by six months or more and 13% abandoned entirely. We will continue to push for more resource and reform to help both the sector and the country to grow.

Considering public procurement accounts for around a quarter of all construction work, this too needs to be improved.  Again, we have seen some small improvements; but more must be done.

From streamlining tender requirements, to reviewing scoring methods and turnover thresholds, and ensuring that clients have the knowledge needed to procure effectively – change is needed to ensure greater SME access and to deliver long-term outputs and outcomes, rather than just short-term benefits.

We must also address private procurement, in particular the rise and risks of D&B contracts. Our services are being sliced and diced. Often, we are hired to do a stage 2 or 3 design (or the mythical stage 2+), before it is farmed out to D&B. This destroys our business model and paints the profession into a concept design corner. It also leads to built outcomes that are unrecognisable from their original designs.

There is a lot to do … but we are ready to take it on

We must find ways of resisting this. Perhaps by promoting novation or insisting that stage 4 must be a requisite for a D&B contract.

D&B will not go away – it is too powerful and too profitable. But we will find ways to work with it that do not impoverish and marginalise the architect.

The role of principal designer, which is perfect for architects, does not work well with D&B contracts and this is not lost on both the government and the contractors who will fight to preserve their business model.

There is a lot to do: more practice support, straightening out contract terms, issues with the PII market. But we are ready to take it on. 

While we are renovating our grade II-listed home at Portland Place, we must also renovate our profession.