Professional Conduct Committee Decisions

ARCHITECTS REGISTRATION BOARD

PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT COMMITTEE

IN THE MATTER OF

STEFAN BLACK (033025F)

28 October 2008 & 12 January 2009

Cliffords Inn Conference Centre
Fetter Lane
London EC4A 1LD

Present:

Chairman: Michael Williams
PCC Member: Christine Mogridge
PCC Member: James Cuthbertson

Ms Nicola Hill appeared as Clerk to the Committee

Mr John Williams of Bankside Law appeared on behalf of the Board

Mr Black attended neither hearing nor was he represented

DECISION

Transcribed by Harry Counsell & Co.
Official Court Reporters
Clifford’s Inn, Fetter Lane. London EC4A 1LD
Tel: 0207 269 0370 Fax: 0207 405 9884

CHARGE

The charge is that the architect is guilty of unacceptable professional conduct, individually or cumulatively, in relation to the following facts:

that he failed to maintain adequate and appropriate professional indemnity insurance from 18 April 2007 in accordance with Standard 8 of the Code of Conduct
that he failed to provide evidence of his professional indemnity insurance in order to demonstrate compliance with Standard 8(3) of the Code and as requested by the Board in letters dated 18 April 2007 and 7 June 2007, 21 August 2007 and 4 January 2008
that he failed to provide a reply to correspondence from the Board dated 18 April 2007, 7 June 2007, 21 August 2007, 4 January 2008, 26 February 2008 and 27 March 2008 promptly and within the timescale set out in Standard 12(4) of the Code

28 October 2008

DECISION

CHAIRMAN: These proceedings were brought on behalf of the Architects Registration Board by Mr John Williams who acts on their behalf. The defendant is a Mr Stefan Black. He did not attend and he was not represented. The three allegations made against Mr Black, as amended by an application that was made by Mr Williams this morning and which we acceded to, were as follows.

The first was that on or after 18 April 2007 Mr Black failed to maintain adequate and appropriate professional indemnity insurance in accordance with the provisions of Standard 8.3 of the Architects Code. The second, which Mr Williams accepted and the PCC has worked on the assumption there is an alternative throughout the conduct of this case, is that Mr Black failed to provide evidence of professional indemnity insurance in the form required by the board in order to demonstrate compliance with Standard 8.3 of the code and the third allegation which is quite separate but in addition to the other two alternative allegations are that Mr Black failed to provide a substantive reply or to procure a substantive reply to correspondence from the board in various letters which are identified specifically in the report provided to the PCC and extend over the period from 18 April 2007 until 27 March 2008. These allegations of failure to provide any kind of response to the board it is alleged are breach of Standard 12(4) of the code.

There were various exhibits put in support of the ARB’s case by Mr Williams and we have been taken through all of these items, pages 1-17 of the report, and we have taken them into account in coming to the decision that we made in respect of this matter.

The finding that we have made in respect of the first two charges as alternatives is that we preferred the allegation of failure to produce to that of there being no insurance in this particular case and our reasons for this are as follows. The documentation which has been produced at page 1 of the exhibits supporting the report prepared by Mr Williams on behalf of the board show that there is quite a number of occasions when Mr Black appears to have been registered over the course of a career, which has obviously spanned some considerable time since his first registration was 1 January 1965 and there have been also quite a number of times during the period from 1 January 1965 to 12 October 2005, which was the date of his last registration, when he has not been registered and the logic of this we believe, and it appears to be supported by the manner in which the information about his registration indicates that he is not practising under the style or other manner, apparently conducting himself as a sole practitioner but simply it has his name on the registration. What this appears to suggest to us is that he may well have been acting as an employee for some or indeed all of these periods of time and, indeed, he may still be, if he is working on a regular basis, an employee at the present time. In those circumstances, it may not be incumbent upon him to have formal registration, but there can be no doubt that where the board asks him to provide information about his insurance then even if the appropriate response would have been that he did not need his own insurance because his employers had adequate PII cover, he would be obliged to provide that information to the board and he has failed to do so. In those circumstances we are quite satisfied that Mr Williams, on behalf of the board, has adequately discharged the burden of proof necessary to show that Mr Black had a duty to produce information about insurance or otherwise and his failure to do so means that we find against Mr Black so far as the second allegation (ii) on page 2 of the report is concerned. In other words, that Mr Black is in breach of his obligations to the board under Standard 8.3 of the code.

So far as the third allegation is concerned, about failure to reply substantively or to procure a substantive reply to correspondence from the Board, it seems to us that he has actually been given really quite generous leeway and there is certainly no explanation of any kind why he has failed to answer what appear to add up to about eight telephone calls and/or letters which seems to us more than sufficient communication from the board and a very surprising omission on the part of Mr Black as an architect not to respond to that so that we have no difficulty in finding that he is in breach of his obligations to the board under standard 12(4) of the code.

The Committee retired to consider penalty

CHAIRMAN: The failure of the defendant, Mr Black, to provide any information about whether he has insurance or not is a serious failure going to the heart of his responsibilities as an architect and his duties under the code. In those circumstances one of the various penalties which we will need to consider as specified in s.15 of the Architects Act is erasure and whilst we have not had an opportunity to decide whether that is the appropriate penalty in this particular case or, indeed, whether any of the other options which are available to us under the same section would be more appropriate, we do think that the most serious possible sanctions must be included within those which we consider. In those circumstances, even though, as I have said previously, Mr Black seems to have been dealt with rather generously by the staff at the Architects Registration Board and had telephone calls and/or letters aplenty over a period of almost a year to establish whether he does have any insurance or not, we do think that he should be given a final opportunity to attend because of the possible seriousness of the sanctions which we would wish to consider. In those circumstances, and in the hope of adopting consistency with the approach that we have employed, or the particular makeup the PCC have employed in the past, we are not going to make a decision today and we propose to adjourn the question of determination of the penalty so that Mr Black will be given a last opportunity to attend and/or make any submissions that he wishes to by way of mitigation before determining what the penalty should be.

12 January 2009

CHAIRMAN: In this case the Board has dealt extremely generously with the defendant, undertaking extensive, regular and relatively expensive communications with him. They wrote letters asking for statements of compliance on the 18 of April 2007, on 7 June, 21 August 2007, that on the same day as that last letter was written Mr Simon Howard got in touch with Mr Black, and so there can be no possible doubt that he, Mr Black, was aware of what was requested of him, but it didn’t seem to result in his taking any action. Subsequently the Board sent a recorded delivery letter on the 4 January 2008, and it was only in February that the matter was passed to the Investigation Committee. Even then the preliminary decision of the Investigation Committee provided what I might describe as a get out of jail offer, and pretty generous in the circumstances, in that they invited Mr Black to comment on the preliminary decision, which they sent to him, and in view of his total failure to respond previously, that preliminary decision had very little alternative but to recommend that the matter should be put before the Professional Conduct Committee. However, that didn’t elicit a response either, and so they wrote to him again on 20 March 2008, giving him details of the final decision that they’d made and the requirements of notification to the PCC.

There have, quite apart from the pretty extensive opportunities that Mr Black was made, and which I have already referred to, he would have had additional opportunities to respond during the disciplinary process itself. He would have had, it appeared, from the time of notification till the actual hearing. He would have had an opportunity to respond or to provide something on 28 October, which was the date of the hearing itself, and of course he’s had another couple of months or so, and yet another reminder of this hearing date, and he has availed himself of none of those opportunities.

In these circumstances it is plain that he has no desire to discharge that part of his professional duty, which demands an appropriate response to the Architects Registration Board, and as far as we are aware, we don’t know whether he has insurance or is merely failing to produce it, but we have indicated that we find the second of those alternatives, and in those circumstances we don’t think that we have any alternative but to make an order for his erasure from the register.

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