Local architects in London: how to choose one well

What is the difference between ARB, RIBA and CIAT?

The three letters mean very different things, and only one of them is a legal protection.

• ARB — Architects Registration Board. The statutory regulator. Only a person on the ARB register may call themselves an architect in the UK; using the title without registration is a criminal offence under the Architects Act 1997. If someone advertises as an architect, their name is checkable on the public register in under a minute.
• RIBA — Royal Institute of British Architects. A voluntary membership body for registered architects. RIBA Chartered Practice status adds vetted insurance, quality management and complaints procedures, but it is a subscription, not a licence.
• CIAT — Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists. The chartered body for architectural technology. An MCIAT technologist is assessed on technical design, construction detailing, building regulations and project delivery rather than on concept design. Chartered Architectural Technologist is itself a protected professional designation.

Nothing in law requires an architect to design a house extension, a loft conversion or a new dwelling. Anyone may prepare and submit a planning application. What the regulator protects is the title, not the activity — so the useful question is not ‘are they an architect?’ but ‘are they chartered by someone, insured, and experienced in this borough?’

Which profession does your project actually need?

Match the appointment to where the difficulty lies. On most London domestic work the difficulty is technical and regulatory, not aesthetic.

The commercial consequence is significant. On a £55,000 loft conversion, an architect on a percentage fee commonly charges £4,500 to £8,000 for the drawing package. Our fixed loft package is £1,225, and the drawing set the council receives is the same set. The saving is not a quality compromise; it is the difference between pricing a defined scope and pricing a share of somebody else’s build budget.

What should you verify before paying a deposit?

• Registration or chartership — ARB register for an architect, CIAT for a technologist. Ask for the membership number, not the logo.
• Professional indemnity insurance — ask for the certificate and the limit. £1m is a floor for domestic work; we carry £2m. Insurance is what stands behind a drawing error that reaches site.
• A written fee proposal with a defined scope — it should say exactly which drawings you receive, how many revision rounds are included, whether the survey is in the fee, and who pays the statutory application fee.
• Borough experience — ask for two recent decision notices in your borough. Planning is administered locally and a practice that has never dealt with your council’s validation list will learn on your project.
• Who does the case management — establish whether answering officer queries and issuing amended drawings during the eight weeks is included or charged as an extra. This is where fixed fees quietly stop being fixed.
• File ownership — confirm you receive editable CAD as well as PDFs, and that there is no licence restriction on using them with another consultant later.

The red flags are equally consistent. Be wary of a fee quoted as a percentage before any scope exists, a refusal to put the drawing schedule in writing, a promise of guaranteed planning permission — nobody can guarantee a decision that is legally the council’s — and any proposal where the survey is an optional extra. A drawing set produced without a survey is a drawing set that will disagree with the building.

How are architect fees structured in London?

There are three common models and they behave very differently when a project changes shape, which London projects reliably do.

• Percentage of construction cost — typically 6% to 12% for full services on domestic work, or 2% to 4% for planning stage alone. Simple to quote and structurally misaligned: the fee rises when the build gets more expensive.
• Hourly rate — commonly £70 to £150 per hour in London for domestic work. Fair in principle, but the client carries all the uncertainty, and council-requested revisions become billable events.
• Fixed fee against a defined scope — what we do. £840 Essentials, £1,225 loft, £1,575 mansard, £1,750 Complete. Revisions requested by the case officer are included, because they are part of getting the permission we were engaged to get.

Whichever model you choose, separate our fee from the disbursements. The statutory application fee is £258 for a householder application, £578 for a full application and £129 for a Lawful Development Certificate. Building control adds roughly £600 to £1,200. A structural engineer and, where notice is served, a party wall surveyor are further line items. A proposal that folds all of these into one number without listing them is hiding something.

Where in London do we work?

All 33 boroughs, including the City of London, and the commuter belt beyond it. Each borough has a page setting out its Article 4 position, conservation areas, dominant housing stock and the services we deliver there, because a rear dormer that is routine in Bexley is a full application with a heritage statement in Kensington and Chelsea.

Practically, the survey is the only part of the job that needs someone on your street. Our surveyors are on site within three to seven working days of instruction anywhere inside the M25. Drafting, revisions, the Planning Portal submission and the eight weeks of case management that follow are handled from the studio, and you track all of it in the client portal alongside your drawings and correspondence.

Choosing an architect: the questions worth asking