As I approach the end of my first quarter as Chair, it seems a good time for a few reflections.

As a statutory regulator, our first duty has to be ensuring our legal duties are properly carried out. The Board has been working hard with the ARB team to ensure pending decisions, especially those on the prescription of qualifications, are moved through the system as swiftly as possible.

At our meeting in April, I spoke about the likely need for a strategic review of our regulatory approach. Before we can start on that, we want to get to know our stakeholders better. We have already welcomed a visit from our sponsoring Government department, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to discuss the range of work underway in the built environment. We will also be conducting research to better understand thoughts and opinions, and over the coming months my fellow Board members and I will be interacting with architects in different types of practice as part of our ongoing induction process.

It’s crucial that our operations continue to be based on solid foundations. It has been some time since the governance of the organisation has been reviewed, so we have started that process with the intention of modernising our governance process by the autumn.

Yours sincerely,

Alison J White

Chair
Architects Registration Board