Overseas prescription

ARB’s present policy is only to prescribe UK qualifications for the purpose of Section 4(1) of the Architects Act 1997. This means that the ARB Board will only accept applications for qualification/s to be prescribed from institutions that are based outside of the UK in exceptional circumstances.

The reasons for this policy are:

• The Board had not, to date, received any applications to which the policy would apply and therefore had little direct evidence of the need to develop processes to deal with such applications.
• In establishing this policy the Board took into account the various routes to registration presently available to the holders of non-UK qualifications including the Prescribed Examination; the resource and technical difficulties that would be involved in any appropriate prescription process; the Board’s inability to recover the cost of any such process by requiring the payment of a fee; the complexities that would be involved in relation to the Board’s role as Competent Authority for the purpose of relevant European Directives. 

This policy is, as are all ARB policies, subject to periodic review.