I need LEGAL advise from anyone in the know.

[Flip]

Where do I stand legally on firing my architect and not paying his bill?

Here is a copy of the letter that I sent to him...

Dear Nigel

I am writing to express my level of disappointment in the service I have received from Foxx Limited. This is for several reasons: -

 We had a verbal agreement that you would make every effort to complete everything ready for work to begin on my loft conversion on the 19th July 2004.

 Planning permission documentation was not supplied to the council in a timely manner, resulting in unnecessary delays (three weeks after my approval).

 You were not very accessible to me when I phoned.

 Practically no phone calls were ever returned.

 This process has been dragged out a lot longer than it has needed to be.

 Excessive delays in work being able to commence will now cause accommodation problems when eventually the work can start.

As a result of this breach of contract I will be seeking compensation, an amount to be agreed between us once you have completed the task which has been in hand for almost four months.

If you didn?t feel you could supply a service within an acceptable time period then I would have preferred to be informed at the outset so that I could have employed someone else to do the job.

Hoping to hear from you soon.

Yours sincerely

Today I have received a letter from the council telling me that they have received my application for building regs on Friday. I spoke to Nigel on Thursday and he said he'd chase it up. I asked him straight out if he'd submitted them yet and he lied to me. Planning permission was given in August! He's wasted nearly two months and now I'm so annoyed that I don't want the job doing. It's going to be winter and I don't want all the upheaval around Christmas.

How do I go about this?

Cheers

Flip

 this is mumsnet's term for a bullet point!

bump

Anyone?

sorry no advice just wanted to say HELLO !!
have not seen you around much laterly hope you are are doing well apart from the obvious loft conversion problems that is.

no practical advice here , sorry.
some ideas:
try phoning CAB or ther must be an architectural trades association phone no in the phone book?
if you ahve free legal advice with your morgage, it's worth phoning them too, they should be very efficient at answering your call and maybe suggest something suitable. we used them once for a neighbour dispute and they were very good.
good luck!

We're also having architect problems at the moment - it's grim isn't it! I can't offer any legal advice but perhaps it would be worth contacting RIBA. They should be able to offer some advice. Their website is here

Is he registered with a professional body? You should contact them and see what they can do.

Message withdrawn

Isnt SofiaAmes an architect - she may be able to help

There is no contract. I haven't signed anything. It's all been verbal which was a stupid thing to do in hindsight.

He's a structual engineer and has his own business which is registered with some trade certificate or other.

He has been a complete nightmare and I just want to get shut. But I don't want to pay him when he's caused so much grief and hasn't done anything to a reasonable standard. It's been more than five months now. How long does it take to draw up plans and submit them to the council? 3-6 weeks. How long does it take to submit to the building regs? 10 days - 3 weeks. Five months is way beyong any reasonable delay.

Am I right?

What exactly has he done that you should pay him for?? Did you both have specific agreements as to when the plans, etc should be done by??

In my opinion, if he has not done as he told you ...and has not given a decent reason for things taking time, you are legally within your rights to teminate your agreement. I think this would come under the suppy and service act of the Trading standards. If he has promised a service and has not provided this service, then he is in breach of this....you can contact the trading standards for further information.

Also, if he was a complete professional, he should have got you to sign a contract....if you have signed nothing then it is not a binding contract...therefore he can do nothing about it.

Hope this is some help for you.

Yes, as a registered architect, he is REQUIRED to have a contract with you and you could report him to the ARB for not having given you one. Though it sounds like he may not be a registered architect, if he is just a structural engineer. Did he TELL you he was a registered architect? That does make a difference, as anyone can legally do residential plans for Planning and Construction, but only an architect can claim to be an architect.

BUT, let's back up a bit....There is absolutely no excuse for not having gotten things done when he said he could, HOWEVER, it sounds like he is relatively inexperience, because 4 months isn't a particularly long time to take for doing initial design plans, submitting them to planning, getting them approved (this takes a MINIMUM of 8 weeks) and then continuing on to do construction documents to submit them to Building Control. By the way, it is not unusual for Building control to take several weeks to "log in" plans, so it's possible that your architect wasn't lying. And there is a bit of battle going on between local Planning Departments and Central government resulting in Planning Departments being purposely difficult about applications and asking for lots of extra bits of documentation that they didn't ask for in the past. The firm that I work at, does almost exclusively residential work and we generally quote a minimum of 4 months for the process that you have just gone through and warn our clients that often it takes far longer. Your architect should have been honest with you, but if he didn't have much experience he may not have known. I would think carefully about switching architects as you are unlikely to find anyone to do things more promptly, even if they tell you they can. In addition, designs and plans are automatically copywritten (i don't what the legal term is), and you would not be able to use either the drawings or design that you have already, without purchasing the rights from the architect, and would have to pay another architect to start the whole process (including applying for planning permission) from scratch. If you really don't expect to continue with the work, then by all means fire the guy, but you may end up having to pay for the work he's done even though he didn't have you sign a contract. It sounds to me like he's done quite a bit of work already and it hasn't actually taken that much longer than it should have and if you do really want the loft conversion you should go ahead with it. Sit down and have a discussion with him about your dissatisfaction with the level of communication that you have had from him and try to set some ground rules for the remainder of the project. (Is he supposed to be recommending builders and overseeing the tender process and construction....this is invaluable if he does know what he's doing...as a structural engineer he would probably have a better idea than the average young architect).

Hope this all helps, even if it's not what you wanted to hear. Let me know if you need any more info.