Another message from RICS
I saw an excellent article in the Built Environment Journal this week. It’s worth reading the entire thing, and if you want to, you can find it here.
A few key highlights worth noting:
- “RICS had received numerous concerns from various tribunals over the conduct of experts”
- “the standards of reports and members’ conduct has been very concerning.”
- “surveyors using pre-formatted reports, including those prepared by others, e.g. support staff, non-trained surveyors, non-regulated surveyors or designated experts.”
- “surveyors have been found to be accepting success-based fees for serving as expert witnesses, which is in strict breach of RICS rules.”
- “Poor-quality evidence has in my experience been a common occurrence in recent years”
All of this aligns with my own experience.
What’s happening in our industry isn’t even a secret at this point. Everyone knows what’s going on, but nothing is happening.
Ubi sunt sanctiones?
Given that RICS are acutely aware of what’s going on, you would think this would be reflected in the sanctions.
I had an AI agent trawl through all of the published disciplinary outcomes on the RICS website to understand who is being sanctioned and for what.
The results are in. A total of 214 disciplinary outcomes were published between April 2021 to April 2026.
You can guess what’s coming, can’t you? Not a single one of these sanctions relates to an expert witness.
I don’t understand how that is possible to reconcile. If everyone knows that people are doing this stuff, then why is no one being sanctioned for it?
And what message is this sending? Breaking the law and serious breaches of RICS rules is not a priority. But fail to record your CPD on time and you’ll be gone.
Absolutely crazy.