ARB to charge ‘crippling’ £9k a year to architecture schools

The announcement, made last week, has been met with 'shock' and 'disappointment' by universities, with one academic saying the annual amount would be 'crippling' for their small architecture school.

The new fee, which must be paid by each 'accredited learning provider' on 1 January, is expected to net the regulator an extra £550,000 a year.

In addition, the board said it would also be charging a fee of £3,000 for each new qualification applied for by the schools and a review fee of £2,000 for 'a renewal of each existing qualification' when the ARB conducts 'a periodic review of the qualifications at a particular learning provider'.

The news comes just days after the ARB announced it would be raising its annual retention fee by £20 – a 67 per cent increase on the amount demanded in 2021 when it was £119. The latest hike, the third in three years, will see the fee to remain on the register in 2024 increase from the current £179 to £199.

Responding to the ARB's new accreditation fee, Kevin Singh, the head of Manchester School of Architecture and a member of the Standing Conference Of Schools of Architecture (SCOSA), said: 'It was extremely disappointing to see the ARB levy this fee without proper consultation, it came as a shock to us all.

'In the absence of detailed information, the figure seems to be arbitrary. There is no explanation of how the figure is derived or what service will be provided for it – yet it is slightly less than the fee paid by one home student, which makes for a convenient narrative.'

Singh said that schools would now have to find this money at 'very short notice' and 'outside of their normal financial planning cycles'.

He added: 'It’s inevitable that some schools will struggle to afford this, or at the very least it will take money away from the student experience. There is no proposal for the fee to be means tested which has disappointed many, especially the smaller schools.'

Singh said that ARB representives at a meeting of  SCOSA in Wolverhampton last week had promised to 'provide detailed information on the fee'.

The fees news follows two years of work by the ARB to overhaul of how architects are trained in what is being billed as the ‘most significant change’ to architectural education in 50 years.

The professional regulator wants to switch to an ‘outcomes-based’ system that recognises ‘what you know’,  ‘what you can do’ and ‘how you must behave’ – instead of ‘how they got there’.

Singh believes the introduction of the fee has been poorly timed. ‘[At] a time when schools of architecture have generally accepted the changes the ARB are making, despite the challenges it presents them, the policy is tone deaf and failed to read the room of one of its most important stakeholders,’ he said. ‘Without schools of architecture there will be no profession in the future.’

‘This will be a crippling cost to a small school like ours’

Swansea School of Architecture senior lecturer Ryan Stuckey said he was shocked by the news. ‘This will be a crippling cost to a small school like ours at Swansea,’ he told the AJ. 'Schools of architecture are on a tight budget already and this, unfortunately, will have an impact on the student experience and the extra curricular activities we strive to offer.'

In its email to schools, the ARB said the fees had been introduced to recover the cost of its education activities, 'including the work of the new accreditation committee, which includes visits, and the management and administration entailed in quality assurance and decision-making'.

This independent committee overseeing the new approach to course quality assurance will replace the former prescription committee, which had advisory powers only.

Until now the costs of ARB's accreditation work has been borne by the fee income from individual registrants ‘through the registration and retention fees’ which roughly totals £7 million a year.

An ARB spokesperson told the AJ: 'ARB’s reforms to initial education and training include clearer and stronger standards to be placed upon all institutions delivering ARB-accredited qualifications, and a new proportionate and risk-based quality assurance of qualifications. This will include visits to institutions which will bring us into line with best practice among professional regulatory and standards bodies.'

In terms of the timing of the introduction of the charges, the board said their levy had only just been made possible following public consultation on proposed amendments to the Architects Act 1997 conducted by the government.

The spokesperson continued: 'The consultation was held between 4 November 2020 and 22 January 2021.

'The legislative changes were made so that ARB can recover the costs of its activities from those who use ARB’s services. Without this change, the costs of accrediting qualifications would fall on the architects’ profession through their annual retention fee for registration.'

For the first year, schools will have until September 2024 to pay the annual fee.

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