Consultation on proposed changes to ARB's General Rules and Registration Rules

Overview

The Architects Registration Board (ARB) is a statutory body which operates under the legal provisions contained within the Architects Act. One of ARB’s responsibilities is to make rules to facilitate the delivery of the Act.  

ARB is now consulting on two sets of rules.

ARB General Rules 

The General Rules exist as a framework to set out how ARB operates, with particular emphasis on Board and organisational governance, and the establishment of committees.

The changes to the General Rules in this consultation are not changes to our regulatory processes or policies. The changes are instead adjustments to improve clarity and consistency.  Policies and processes relating to registration matters are also being moved into a separate document, the Registration Rules. 

The draft General Rules can be viewed here.

ARB Registration Rules 

The proposed Registration Rules comprise a new document, much of which previously existed in the General Rules but has been separated to improve clarity and accessibility.  

The draft Registration Rules can be viewed here.

The purpose of the Registration Rules is to explain how people can become registered for the first time, how architects can maintain their registration, and how former architects can be reinstated to the Register.

The Registration Rules also include processes for how fees will be charged and contain an Annexe which sets out the qualifications that have been accredited by ARB for the purposes of registration. Most of these matters were previously contained within the General Rules, but there are some new items contained with these Rules: 

1. They formally set out for the first time the requirements for architects to carry out Continuing Professional Development as a condition of registration, following an amendment Parliament made to the Architects Act 1997 when it approved the Building Safety Act 2022. The Rules give effect to and articulate how ARB will carry out the policies within the Scheme for CPD, including, for example, how and when architects would be removed from the Register for failing to comply. 

2. They propose that architects must now pay fees electronically through the MyARB portal. This change will improve the efficiency of ARB’s processes and the security of personal and financial data.  

3. They include a requirement that architects must declare any criminal convictions they have, and confirm that they have read and understood and continue to act in accordance with the Architects Code, before registration can be renewed. 

4. They propose further clarity on the responsibility for architects to provide and maintain contact details where they can be reached at home, relating to their professional registration, and their business (if different), which will be used on the public register. They also propose that architects can now restrict some of their publicly available contact details. 

5. They propose that in future, ARB will send out the retention fee notice by email only. This would be a more environmentally sustainable and cost effective approach than printing and posting notices to every registrant and is expected to save more than £60,000 a year.  

6. They propose that ARB should have the power to remove an architect from the Register when they have only been registered because of fraud or error.

A Board paper about these changes, which includes further detail on our rationale for the consultation and the risk implications with this work, is available on our website here, with the paper itself available directly here.