Strong words as RICS SRB quits – read the resignation letter in full

Below is the unedited text of a letter from Charles Banner KC to RICS president Ann Gray on behalf of the members of the RICS standards and regulation board following the resignation of SRB chair Dame Janet Paraskeva. Dear Ann, I have seen Rt. Hon. Dame Janet Paraskeva’s resignation letter to you of today’s date in response to your communications with her earlier this week. I am in complete agreement with all that she says in it. I consider your purported reasoning for her intended removal as Chair of RICS’ Standards and Regulation Board (‘SRB’) to be both spurious and completely at odds with the public interest that RICS is obliged to serve under its Royal Charter. At an emergency meeting of the SRB yesterday evening, I proposed (entirely unprompted by Dame Janet) first, that the SRB reaffirm its previous endorsement of all of her exchanges with DLUHC and, secondly, that all members of the SRB resolve to resign in the light of your expressed intention to remove Dame Janet from her post. Both motions were carried unanimously. For its entire lifetime, the SRB has had to face sustained attacks from RICS’ leadership on its independence and proper functioning in the public interest. I have come close to resigning in the face of this on multiple occasions. To her credit, Dame Janet has on each occasion persuaded me to stay on in the hope that the SRB may eventually be allowed properly to function as the independent regulator within RICS, as always was the intention behind the SRB’s establishment and as was most recently reaffirmed through the Bichard Review and thereafter the Framework Document, the drafting of which I spent many unpaid hours assisting with but which regrettably under your Chairship was almost immediately undermined. I had previously hoped that the succession of previous inroads into the independence and proper functioning of the SRB was attributable to particular individuals who either have now left or who are about to leave. It is now regrettably clear that the problems are instead deeply engrained and endemic. I no longer have any hope that independent regulation within RICS is possible. I consider that the dysfunction within RICS is beyond salvation and that the time has now come for an external regulator to be set up by statute. I express the hope that those in Government shall consider this as a matter of urgency. To that effect, I am copying this letter to Rt. Hon. Michael Gove MP, the Secretary of State for DLUHC. At the heart of RICS’ Charter is the public interest. Like Dame Janet and the rest of the SRB, I have put in literally hundreds of hours beyond our contracted time to do all we can to deliver effective oversight of standards and regulation in that public interest. This has included literally dozens of emergency meetings over the last 3 years as RICS has swung from one crisis to another. All of us on the SRB have worked night and day over (in most cases) what is now several years to do all we can to persuade RICS’ leadership of the importance and benefits (not just to the public interest but also to the surveying profession) of independent regulation, albeit from within, and it is a matter of immense regret that that these efforts have persistently landed on deaf ears. If desired by RICS, I am prepared to serve the same notice period as Dame Janet. If you do not indicate that you wish to take that offer up 16:00 next Monday 26th June then please consider my resignation effective as of that time, or as of such earlier time as you reject that offer. Yours sincerely, Charles Banner KC Cc: Theresa Thorp, Director Regulation Enforcement & Governance, RICS Cc: Rt. Hon. Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Housing, Levelling Up and Communities See also: RICS resignations – read the letter that started it all >> See also: Dame Janet Paraskeva’s resignation letter >> To send feedback, e-mail newsdesk@eg.co.uk or tweet @EGPropertyNews