In July we published our Annual Report and Financial Statements for 2020; this sets out our work in maintaining the Register, recognising qualifications and managing complaints.
Highlights
Highlights include our strategic statements on fire and life safety design and climate change, information on exiting the EU, our strategic statement on equality, diversity and inclusion and associated research, guidance on working during the Covid-19 pandemic and maintaining professional standards.
The Annual Report details ARB’s work in maintaining the register, managing complaints about architects, and recognising qualifications so that new architects can join the register. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting national restrictions, ARB delivered all its statutory functions. In 2020 ARB approved 25 architecture qualifications and monitored a further 124 (double the figure monitored in 2019), and handled 154 formal complaints and an additional 500 complaints about misuse of the title ‘architect’.
You will also find an overview of the performance of our organisation over the past twelve months, and ARB’s financial statements which contain information on financial matters such as costs, investments, grants and assets.
Key finding: Underrepresentation in the profession
As part of the report, we publish the data we hold on the demographics of the profession. This is the only data available on the profession as whole in the UK, and exposes concerning areas of representation: in 2020 only 1% of architects identified their ethnic group as Black, and only 29.6% of architects were female.
At the end of 2020 we held equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) data on 68% of the profession and would encourage anyone who hasn’t yet shared their data with us to do so. The data is gathered and held in an anonymised format and cannot be attached to your individual entry on the register. As we develop our plans for increasing access to the profession and driving inclusivity, it’s help for us to have an accurate picture of the make-up of the Register. You can share your EDI data here.
You can find more headlines, and the report itself, on our website here.
