Bichard RICS report to ‘return control’ to members

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is set to overhaul its management structure with new leadership roles and committees and scale back its focus on commercial activities, as part of Lord Michael Bichard’s long-awaited review into the organisation’s governance and purpose. The wide-ranging, 68-page report outlines 36 measures that Bichard has urged the RICS to adopt “at pace”. The organisation’s governing council has backed all of the proposals. Bichard, who was paid £80,000 for six months of work on the report, told EG he is confident his review will introduce a governance structure that would make it “very difficult” for the kind of scandals that happened in 2018 and 2019 to reoccur. He added that one of the review’s key objectives was “to return control of the RICS to its members, with the exception of standards and regulation”. While there are “no surprises” in the review, Bichard called it a “radical programme of transformation that addresses the problems”. He said: “Whichever interest group has been expressing concerns, they have been met in this report.” The first phase of implementing the recommendations will involve re-establishing the institution’s reporting lines and introducing new leadership roles to simplify its governance model. Interim chair of governing council Nick Maclean said: “Before we do anything else, because there are going to be some major decisions, we need to understand who is responsible and who reports to whom. That’s going to be a key part of phase one.” Countdown to October Under Bichard’s proposals, governing council will remain the ultimate authority at the institution. However, it will now be chaired by the president – a role that has not only been retained, but will now become the highest elected postholder at the RICS. A board will be formed to oversee day-to-day operations and delivering a business plan agreed by the governing council. The process of recruiting a permanent leader for the executive has restarted, as well as a new chair of the board, chair of a combined nominations and remunerations committee and a senior vice-president. As part of a wider effort to distance the RICS’ activities as a member-led organisation from its commercial activities, the chief executive role has been renamed as “director-general”. “Having a director-general rather than a chief executive reinforces that the people ultimately making the decisions are the members,” said Bichard. It is a race against time, with both Maclean’s and interim chief executive Richard Collins’ leadership terms ending on 5 October. The organisation has whittled its list of potential headhunters down to a shortlist of three, with interviews on preliminary findings from those recruiters taking place in the coming days. A panel of individuals within and outside of the profession has been assembled to make the decision. Those appointments will be unveiled in early July. “By 5 October, some significant things will have got to have happened,” Bichard said. Governing council reshuffle Two independent members will be added to governing council. One of these will be the newly created job of senior independent governor – a specific role to monitor and handle issues that “are likely to bring the institution into disrepute”. This is the equivalent of a senior independent director at a UK corporate. “I don’t think the problems of 2018 and 2019 could possibly occur with that sort of person in the mix,” said Bichard. The governing council’s line-up will also change to better reflect geographies and specialisms. A representative for younger members will have a governing council seat. In total, it will expand to 28 members from 22. Reforming panels and committees Five committees will be created as part of the restructuring, as well as three new panels. These include a public interest panel, which will advise the governing council, and a diversity & inclusion panel. A committee overseeing professional group panels will also be set up, alongside a wider consultation on how the organisation’s numerous disciplines are structured. A “clearly” separate commercial arm will also be formed, reporting to the board, following observations that the balance between the body’s activities as a professional organisation and as a profit-led corporate entity had gone “awry”. “I see no reason why RICS should not have commercial programmes and activities, but I think it is wrong if these dominate to such an extent that the core offer of free services to members suffers,” Bichard said. He added: “Commercial income should be subsidising members’ subscriptions, not the other way around.” Regional boards will have greater autonomy and more devolved powers. Maclean said: “The delegation of authority to local countries or boards is what members have been crying out for. There’s been too much centralisation, so power and responsibility is being put back to local regions.” The election process for governance bodies will also be simplified by the governing council. To further shift the dial back towards public interest, Bichard has proposed a new fund for public interest activities, which could include support for members undertaking pro bono work. This could be financed through sanctions imposed on members and firms from regulation. Mending member/staff ties The organisation’s culture also features heavily in the report, with Bichard noting the RICS “has become too centralised and controlling in a way which stifles the initiative of both members and employees”. “The best organisations realise that the key to success is to empower staff and members, not simply control them, and that requires higher levels of devolution than can currently be found in RICS,” he said. To help rebuild the relationship between the RICS’ staff and members, a new customer service improvement programme, spanning processes, systems and culture will be created. Bichard also called for more transparency in the way the organisation operates. He said: “I believe there has in the past been a widespread tendency to simply not share information or to only make the minimum necessary available. This is linked to a lack of accountability within current structures.” More SRB autonomy In a similar outcome to Peter Pereira Gray’s review, Bichard said the RICS should remain a self-regulated body. While Bichard said he “would be surprised” if the government does not consider a separate entity to regulate the surveyor profession, he highlighted his own view that it would be “a mistake” if RICS did not retain responsibility for standards and regulations. Instead, he has suggested the organisation’s standards and regulations board needs to become more autonomous, while shedding its thought leadership, public affairs and commercial activities to focus solely on regulatory operations. Path for the future On the government’s new powers to commission an independent review of the RICS, Bichard said there are “discussions to be had about the terms of the provision in the Levelling-up Bill”. He has proposed a five-yearly independent review of the RICS, on top of external performance evaluations for both the board and the SRB every three years. “I would hope that government and RICS officials could now get together and perhaps achieve some [amendments] to the bill that were more reasonable,” he said. With the review now completed, Maclean outlined his hopes that the institution is finally “on the path for the future”. “We want… to stop investigating ourselves and get on with setting the strategy for the institution, ultimately for the benefit of our members,” he said. “I hope this is a watershed moment that allows us to get on [with] that.” The full Bichard RICS review can be found here.  See also: Bichard Review responses put RICS failings in the spotlight and Levitt’s RICS report: 10 key takeaways   To send feedback, e-mail pui-guan.man@eg.co.uk or tweet @PuiGuanM or @EGPropertyNews Image © EG