The outcome of suing the architect was unfavourable. The architect was insured for £250K, our claim was for £750K, based upon £187K to sue the architect, £63K to demolish the existing building, £500K to build what we should have had in the first place if the architect hadn't been stupid. The insurers of the architect eventually met with us at the last instance possible whereat they adopted the stance of; "Our liability is £250K, it will cost you another £120K to take this all the way to court from here, so we will give you the balance of £130K right now to settle, any more you would have to get from the architects directly. To achieve that you would have to go to court, win the case and get a judgement, which you probably would, we'd pay you our £250K liability, and then you would have to go back to court if the architects don't pay the balance, to get another judgement to make them bankrupt.

Was it worth bankrupting the architect? We were told that they had had to sell their only major asset (house) because the insurer had withdrawn insurance, making it virtually impossible to for them to get insurance anywhere else, and therefore they were no longer able to practice as architects and had had to de-register, they had had to move and down-size into a smaller building on the south coast. Their occupation was most likely to be teaching architecture as it didn't require competence and insurance. It didn't seem worth it.

However, it did make me enter correspondence with the A.R.B (Architects Registration Board) about their attitude towards Professional Indemnity insurance cover, why did they not adopt the attitude of all other Institutes and make their members insure themselves for the work they did? The RICS (looked down upon by architects) actually stipulates the level of insurance required by members and requires them to show evidence that they have it. The response I received from the ARB was poor, after much correspondence they eventally told me that they had no intention of changing their policy as their members wouldn't like it. Well what about the client?

I approached ITV "homes from hell" and told them about the way architects practice and that the trades "Federation of Master Builders" provides a client with better protection than the professional body for architects does, so why were they always picking on builders when architects were worse? And that we had a home from hell which was all to do with architects not builders, I sent them a 1 minute video and a page of text. They did come back to me on the phone and I was able to tell their researcher (who was disbelieving) that if they looked it up on the ARB web site they would see the recommendation for insurance cover for an architect to practice and if they thought that was sensible then they could forget about me. The next day ITV rang me along the lines of "we have looked at it and don't think this can possibly be right" can we come and interview you.

After further discussion ITV sent a crew of 6 to film our home, which was a building site at that time, and the problems we had and the progress  we were making, the filming allowed me to point out the failings of the architect's insurance practice and used our own experience as an example of how little protection a client has and how the attitude of the profession is one of "caveat emptor", this was filmed in 2009 and eventually went out in a programme in 2010. ITV did do a follow up programme a year later and we were able to say that the 2008 code of practice for architects now urged architects to insure themselves for the work they did, unfortunately it hadn't been available in 2009 when the original programme was made. Go figure!

At least now there is more security for a client employing an architect, but its still a long way off requiring the architects to insure themselves for the work they do like all other institutes require chartered members to have.