When to pay the architect?

[Imsosorryalan75]

Our architect has drawn up plans for our long awaited annex. He has submitted them to the council as asked and now wants to be paid his fee. I was going to pay him but my neighbour said not to give him the full amount as the planning dept may want us to make changes and if we've paid then he has no incentive to honour them. What is the normal procedure?

I paid in stages which reflected where we were...so plans completed..paid that point then post planning for her building regs drawings etc

It depends what your agreement is. If they’ve prepared full drawings and documents based on the proposals you want and have agreed, and submitted them, and that’s what they’ve quoted for then they’ve done what they’ve quoted for and you should pay them. If they said that they’d support the application through to determination and offered unlimited revisions, then you should only pay them for the work they’ve completed and wait until the rest of their appointment is completed before paying the rest.

Your neighbour sounds a bit cynical. Most architects don’t need an ‘incentive’ to try to get you a good outcome, and it’s only fair that they are paid for work they have done. If the council demands lots of revisions that take lots of time, it’s a bit unfair to ask the architect to predict all of that and ask them to include that in their original fee.

Depends on your agreement.

DH is an architect and says he would expect to be paid at the time of submitting to planning.

We're just going through this. First payment is due one we've agreed final plans to be submitted. Second stage is when planning is granted (which will include amendments to plans if necessary to get them through). Third payment is due after he's done building reg drawings.

We paid our architect once the plans were submitted because we weren't keeping him on as a project manager for the build (my husband is experienced in this kind of thing so he did it). We got the application refused actually but decided after that to go to a planning consultant and a different architect. We got there in the end and it's all built. Good luck!!

I would look at the detail of the contract, not listen to your neighbour.

We paid in stages as per contract

Pay on submission, pay for amendments, pay for building plans. But I like to pay people for the work as they do it - mn like to hold a little back.