The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has started a 30-day redundancy consultation with staff as part of a wholesale review of the organisation to ensure more services are devolved to the regions.
The restructuring process, being overseen by chief executive officer Justin Young, is expected to see between 20 and 100 centralised roles cut, while other roles would be added in the regions.
Young wants to put 50% more staff into the UK regions, at offices in Birmingham, Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, and around the world. Lord Michael Bichard's review in to the organisation recommended that it “increase levels of devolution” while better supporting local branches.
Speaking to CoStar News, Young said the job losses would be broadly neutral eventually over the year after losses outweighed new roles initially. "We want to put more resources on the ground near where members are."
The process began two years ago with the appointment of former CBRE UK and Europe chair Martin Samworth as RICS chair.
Samworth explains: "I was asked to oversee a transformation journey. I appointed Justin as CEO and he has appointed an executive board. It is clear to us we need to make some strategic changes to ensure RICS is fit for purpose and properly organised so that it is able to respond to our members and grasp the opportunity that has become apparent to us about the role RICS can play. Those issues arise on a fairly consistent basis. What we have instigated is a wholesale review and a consultation process to make sure we have the right people in the right place."
Young says the move is fundamental to plans to create "a world-class organisation".
"The new operating model is a significant milestone. It is about making us more accessible and relevant to our stakeholders, to governments to educational establishments, by having the right people with the right capability."
A big shift on the ground, Young says, will be more resourcing in the regions across the UK and across its global footprint. "They will have a higher level of autonomy, a freedom within the framework. We will see an element of focus too on commercial activity. What we are producing in terms of standards and thought management is really useful for other people in the built environment who are not members of RICS. There will be charges for courses that people want to come on as non members. We are beefing up the research and analysis and our reports of interest."
RICS is also responding to the changing way people work with its Westminster Great George Street home undergoing a refurbishment of the second, third and fourth floors to create among other things a members' hub.
Young has also replaced six of the eight members of the executive board with people from international organisations and executive bodies.
Samworth says the executive board is working very collaboratively with RICS's board members as well as the standards and regulation board. RICS is also working closely with the leading commercial agents on the Property Advisors Forum, particularly on diversity, equity and inclusion and helping with connectivity with other professional bodies in the built environment. "We are also focused on what we can do around data and what has been happening with collection and assimilation. It is a close and collaborative relationship and we meet once a quarter. But it is not just about big firms, we are very focused on SMEs."
Young says key areas of focus are enlisting candidates from more diverse backgrounds with different skills into the industry via new “pathways” to accreditation and among other things he is backing a move for a built environment GCSE in the rest of the UK alongside Wales, where one already exists.
"The restructure allows us to create teams to work really closely with universities and other educational establishments. We are carrying out a whole review of how we do assessments and qualifications for people coming in. On sustainability we are focused on how we can create a sustainability pathway. From members we need other pathways beyond the traditional ones. Of course we need valuers but we need data analysts, people in proptech and debt and equity specialists."
RICS employs 723 staff in total, 200 of them in the standards and regulation.
The talks come as it emerged the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' new President Justin Sullivan's work as an expert witness is to be reviewed by its independent regulator.
Sullivan, the founder and chief executive of construction consultancy business Adair, became the RICS president for 2025 on 1 January.
He has been in the spotlight after serving as an expert witness to the defendant in a case focused on a couple who paid £32.5 million for a mansion in Ladbroke Grove which they subsequently found to be infested with moths. The judge who ruled in favour of the claimants criticised Sullivan's testimony saying: “I was unimpressed by his exercise of judgement, which seemed to me to be flawed in many instances, and by his approach to answer questions that were put to him.”
In a statement on its website RICS said: "You may be aware of some commentary that has appeared in the UK press and social media over the past few days around Justin Sullivan’s work as an Expert Witness.
"As a result of this interest, we have issued the following press statement: 'Justin Sullivan denies any wrongdoing. The expert witness process is by its nature adversarial, therefore it is inevitable that there are disagreements. Mr Sullivan acted as an independent expert witness in this case in accordance with Ministry of Justice CPR Part 35 which sets out expert witnesses duties, and RICS Surveyors expert witnesses 4th edition amended February 2023 rules, which sets surveyors’ professional standards. To ensure all standards were followed he has asked the RICS independently-led regulator to assess the case.'”
RICS said it will update once the assessment has been completed.
The industry body is looking to draw a line under a turbulent few years.
In 2022, the institution began implementing the Bichard independent review into its purpose, governance and strategy. The independent review was published in June 2022 with 36 recommendations for its overhaul, citing an "urgent" and "unarguable" need for change. The institution had already committed to implementing the 18 recommendations of the Levitt inquiry into events that took place in 2018-19 following an audit of RICS's finances.