LEGAL UPDATE: Architect's professional negligence

In a recent professional negligence case decided against an architect, the Court found that the architect firm should pay damages to its client, as the architect had ignored the client’s instructions about their budget.

In the case of Riva Properties v Foster & Partners the hotel group advised the architects that they had a budget of £75 million for designing and building a new hotel.

The Judge was critical of the architect’s attitude to their client describing them as “wholly unprofessional”. The architect had suggested to their client that the design of the hotel, which would cost £195 million to build rather than the client’s budgeted £75 million, could be engineered down to £100 million, when that was not possible.

This case illustrates that whilst the architect’s designs might not have been intrinsically negligent, it was negligent of the architect not to pay heed to the client’s budget.

The architect’s firm was ordered to pay £3.6 million to their client.

This case could also be applied to solicitors’ negligence and surveyor’s negligence, where ignoring a client’s budget could lead to a negligence claim.

At Samuels Solicitors we have decades of experience of dealing with negligence claims against a wide variety of professionals.  In appropriate cases we are able to take these matters on a no win no fee basis and we are happy to give a free initial assessment of any professional negligence matter.

Contact us today for a discussion about how we can assist.

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