The lift is broken at 12 Great George Street. It is a twisting, steep climb up five stories at the RICS’ HQ to the president’s room, but in walks Alan Collett, the RICS’ new president, looking refreshed and unfazed.
While the unintentional exercise has not bothered Collett, who officially took over from See Lian Ong as the 131st president on 2 July, he knows that, like previous presidents, he will need all the energy he can muster to face angry members.
Taking critical pot shots at the 144-year old institution seems to have become a national surveyor sport.
The subject perennially fills much of EG‘s mailbag with complaints about aggressive disciplinary procedures, the valuers registration scheme, the organisation’s strategy of growing overseas and criticism of how it is spending its 75,000 UK members’ £500 pa fees.
“After some 62 years in the profession, I feel the members deserve better treatment than is being given by the present hierarchy at the RICS,” said Michael Cotton FRICS in May. “I quite honestly cannot afford [the membership fee], and I wrote to the RICS explaining that I am very concerned that, after e-mails, letters and calls, I have not had a response at all from the RICS, which I think is shocking.”
“It is sad that the rank and file membership appear to be thought of with such contempt by the governing body,” said Michael Roberts FRICS, F&S Property Management, in a letter in June. “Regrettably, it seems to me that those members who are not dealing with international work or major institutional instructions are simply being used as a source of income to support the RICS in its promotion of those who are.”
As the organisation’s new president, Collett, a former Allsop senior partner, says he is prepared to listen to any and all criticism. However, he argues that most members are happy with the service they receive from the institution.
“Our [satisfaction] surveys are accurate enough to know where the most dissatisfied people are, and there are several hundred of them. They are members and their views are as of much interest to us as the people who say the RICS is great,” he says. “Members always have a right to question what we do on their behalf But it tends to be the minority who write to me, they write to the RICS and they write to the Estates Gazette, and it is, in part, a generational thing.”
Collett, 61, and a RICS member since 1974, says that he represents the most dissatisfied group, which he describes as “a small minority who are fellows in their 50s or 60s”.
Member dissatisfaction with the RICS came to a head in 2004 when 880 grass-roots members, led by Schofield Lothian quantity surveyor Jeremy Hackett, took umbrage with a 32% fees hike and refused to pay, prompting the RICS to swiftly commission a review of members’ grievances.
Since the publication of the Brooks Review that year, which set out proposals to engage local members, things have calmed down. And Collett is quick to point to other innovations the RICS is implementing to try to engage this group.
“There is a programme to try and improve our performance in some of the things that they say for instance, some want more local meetings, so two years ago we set up a regional board to look at [holding more of them].”
At the moment, there are some 135 local member groups in operation, and the UK board is supporting efforts to expand the network.
And the institution is going further. As well as roadshows held across the country, Collett points out that the RICS also runs roundtables and member focus groups to “foster debate with members on key issues in order to garner opinion and identify practical measures that can be implemented to improve satisfaction and standards”.
Representatives of the UK board have visited every UK regional board to discuss RICS’ strategy.
With nearly 80% of RICS’ membership comprising small businesses, the UK board is exploring how RICS products and services can be adapted to better serve this specific group.
Meanwhile, the institution has started a new members satisfaction survey, allowing for more detailed feedback. And online, the RICS is implementing major changes to its IT systems this year, including streamlined digital communication.
“We have 25,000 members of the LinkedIn group. The RICS Facebook page has 2,500 members, and for the majority of members coming into the profession, social networking is important to them,” Collett says.
In the next couple of months, the RICS is launching a website that will enable members to interact more within the RICS environment rather than having to use external social media sites.
As for interaction, Collett firmly believes that: “Members have a responsibility to stay in touch with us. It’s a two-way thing.”
He adds: “The RICS offers, and it puts out into the ether and into print, the information about what it is doing. But, it is an unfortunate fact that not all of our members read it. Does that mean we need to raise our game in making it more attractive, more targeted? Yes, it does. We have a big investment programme, principally in IT, but also in the print media, to improve the way we offer information to our members – but I can’t make them read it.
“What do we require of our members? We require that they act ethically and that they keep themselves up-to-date. What do we want of them? We want them to tell us what they think, and we want them to be involved to the extent they want to be involved. We want them to recognise that it’s their RICS, and not someone else’s.”
Collett explains that, every year, the RICS sends out the annual report and accounts, and informs members about what it is doing both in the UK and internationally.
“We have 1,000 members on various committee boards,” he says. “But people don’t see those 1,000 members [being actively involved], they see ‘the RICS’, but it’s not the RICS, it’s our RICS. It’s their RICS.”
This comment is a sign of Collett’s frustration with members’ who accuse the RICS of spending their money on what they perceive as the president flying around the world on luxury trips and expanding its overseas reach at the expense of the majority of its UK membership.
The RICS now has seven global regional offices employing 92 staff in locations from Belgium to Dubai, and around 26,300 members in 146 countries. In the UK, it employs 432 staff.
According to the latest report and accounts, out of the 2011 fee income of £39.2m, £7.9m was spent on what the RICS describes as “gaining influence and building brand profile”, – far less than the £13.4m spent on “regional and local service provision”. Overall it made a net deficit of £863,000.
Collett says there is a dedicated UK executive team tasked with looking after the RICS’ core market, while members in the UK are actually reaping the benefits of its overseas work. Over the coming years, the RICS predicts that the international side as a whole will end up underpinning the UK operation, and adds that its Asian operation is already a “net contributor” to the organisation in terms of subscriptions.
“The facts are that UK members are each spending less than the price of a pint [around £2] a year on overseas expansion. And we live in a global world. If they are doing valuations on the Wirral, they may be doing valuations for a German bank, or a Japanese company that is expanding its factory.
“You don’t want [foreign companies] coming into the UK and saying we don’t want our valuations done by chartered surveyors, we want them done by, say, a member of the American Appraisal Institute. You want them to know what the advantages are of RICS chartered surveyors doing the work.”
Expanding abroad, says Collett, increases the reputation of the RICS.
Alan Collett, Bsc, FRICS; RICS president 2012-13
Collett is consultant to Allsop LLP and chairman of Allsop Residential Investment Management.
He joined Allsop & Co from the College of Estate Management in 1972.
He was a senior partner from 1996-2006.
Collett is also director at Consortium Investment Management; honorary fellow and member of the board at the College of Estate Management; member of the Securities Institute and Investment Property Forum; chairman of the BPF residential committee and member of the RICS communications board.
