Delivering for our members
Membership
In 2023, we focused on activity we know our members value the most: supporting our member networks, enabling community engagement, developing our life–long education and skills programmes, and sharing business– critical resources. In terms of overall membership development and support, we:
Welcomed over 1,500 new RIBA Chartered Members and 300 new Chartered Practices.
Retained 94% of our Chartered Members with over six years’ experience.
Received an average Contact Centre satisfaction score of over 90% in the second half of the year.
Key UK membership achievements included:
Launching a refreshed Future Architects programme for our student and associate members. This comprised of a Regional Student Awards programme, new podcast series, monthly newsletter, and a mentoring programme that saw 1,200 students based across 37 RIBA–validated schools of architecture mentored by architects from 314 Chartered Practice.
Granting £198,310 as part of the Local Initiative Fund to enable 111 local events and programmes to be delivered through volunteer branches and groups, providing local value to members and the wider built environment.
Devising and delivering 408 events engaging over 14,000 attendees, many in collaboration with local Branches and groups.
Delivering an exciting Regional Awards programme, supporting 11 juries in visiting 211 shortlisted projects, and hosting 10 ceremonies attracting over 1,800 attendees.
Hosting our annual UK Members Forum with 98 attendees and 28 speakers discussing topics ranging from education to planning. Internationally, we worked hard to strengthen relationships between members, chapters, international offices and other institutes, and built strategic partnerships.
Key achievements included:
Granting £48,000 as part of the Local Initiative Fund to support Chapter initiatives in Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and the Gulf. This included curating ‘Sustainability: Past, Present and Future’ for Dubai Design Week.
Continued to collaborate with the British Council on the ‘Open Door’ project in China, with an exhibition in Shanghai featuring outstanding conservation projects by emerging architects in mainland China and the UK.
Delivering a strong message at MIPIM, with a delegation comprising 19 Chartered Practices.
Signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Architecture and Design Commission – a commitment to collaborate and to support and advance architectural excellence.
Delivering a programme at the major real estate event, Cityscape Global. This included partnering on the groundbreaking CityscapeWIRE initiative to promote women in real estate.
Hosting International Trade Week sessions on working in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan with the Department for Business and Trade, helping our members to export their skills and enter new markets.
We also worked hard to foster international relations, including:
Attending the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Conference and renewing our Memorandum of Understanding at the UN Climate Change Conference COP28.
Attending two Architects’ Council of Europe (ACE) General Assemblies.
Attending the International Union of Architects (UIA) World Congress of Architects and General Assembly
Signing the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA) Knowledge Partnership Memorandum of Understanding to support those countries facing the most urgent challenges of rapid urbanisation and climate change.
Practice
We continued to support our members with professional knowledge and guidance, specifically around addressing the climate emergency, navigating the complexities of the Building Safety Act and preparing our members for the new Building Control regimes in England and Wales.
We also took time to help members understand the implications of technological change for the practice of architecture, not least in the evolving field of AI. In total, more than 80,000 people visited our professional features pages on architecture.com.
Key achievements included:
Developing a series of Plan of Work Overlays on topics ranging from Passivhaus to inclusive design.
Collaborating to create the UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard – a single, agreed methodology for defining what ‘net zero’ means for UK buildings across a range of different typologies.
Publishing an initial guide to the Building Safety Act to prompt members and practices to start considering key issues in respect of duties, processes, civil and criminal liabilities and professional insurance. This was supported by regular professional features on secondary legislation.
Launching our Principal Designer Register, enabling members to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, experience and behaviours to fulfil the Principal Designer duty holder role under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 and the amended Building Regulations in England. Over 350 members completed our Principal Designer CPD course.
Investing in research and partnerships and continuing our programme of economic research through our monthly Future Trends and annual Business Benchmarking surveys.
Maintaining high professional standards through a new CPD Auditing and Compliance policy. This saw us resume comprehensive CPD auditing, simplify our CPD compliance rules and introduce an associated disciplinary process. It also saw us introduce enhanced, more flexible exemptions for people on maternity, paternity, carer or long–term sick leave.
Commencing work on the implementation of our first Mandatory Competence in Health and Life Safety, piloting our online competence test.
Education
We continued to engage and share our expertise with the Architects Registration Board (ARB), education providers, practices and government so that together we can create a system that works for all. Our education reform agenda seeks to create greater flexibility in study structures to make access to the profession more inclusive.
Key achievements included:
Publishing our Education White Paper setting out proposals for more flexible and shorter study patterns and innovation in the educational curriculum to meet the needs of contemporary practice.
Delivering an Education and Practice Away Day for a wide range of stakeholders to discuss and debate education reform.
Launching a work experience toolkit, providing support for practices who are offering work experience to young people ages 14 to 19.
Delivering learning programmes to more than 6,500 participants.
Publishing the findings of our annual Education Statistics survey, enabling us to track changes in the demographics of participation in architectural education.
Completing 21 UK validation visits and 13 international validation visits.
Delivering the President’s Medals student awards programme, receiving the highest ever number of entries: 348 students nominated by 100 schools of architecture located in 35 countries.
Influencing
We advocated on behalf of the profession and society, sharing members’ expertise and providing solutions to societal and environmental challenges. We sought to demonstrate the value of architecture and architects to clients, the wider industry, government and society.
Key highlights included:
Responding to 22 Government consultations and parliamentary inquiries, covering diverse areas including changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, improving flood defences, decarbonising heating in homes, improving heat resilience and sustainable cooling in buildings, and widening VAT relief on energy– saving materials.
Attending over 100 meetings with Ministers, Members of Parliament and civil servants.
Successfully leading a cross–sector fire safety campaign to require second staircases in new high rise residential buildings based on an 18m height threshold.
Hosting and participating in events to celebrate the signing of a Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) between the USA and the UK, with representatives from the ARB, NCARB, and the US Embassy.
Attending the Labour and Conservative Party Conferences, with our President speaking at fringe events on housing, retrofit and RAAC.
Attending COP28, promoting our work on embodied carbon and retrofit, connecting with international stakeholders on sustainability matters and contributing to panel events and meetings.
Hosting high–profile events at 66 Portland Place including “Beauty: who cares, wins!” with the Office for Place, and welcoming Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to make a major planning policy speech.
Securing over 350 media moments, promoting our policy and public affairs activities.
Marketing and communications
We focused on delivering targeted campaigns through the media and digital platforms, making sure our voice was heard on debates and issues that matter to our members and society. We worked hard to position our senior representatives as industry thought leaders and forged new media partnerships, reaching millions of people across the world.
We employed an always–on approach to our membership value campaigns, and made changes to streamline and improve the performance of our emails and social channels – maximising cut–through and impact. Our average social media post engagement rate was 11.67% against non–profit, media and real estate industries benchmarking at 1.3% – 2%. We also grew follower numbers to over 580k across the core RIBA Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts. Our weekly newsletter, Member Update, received a 50% open rate and 12% click rate, a year–on–year open rate increase of 4% and click rate increase of 5.7%.
We commissioned intelligent films and created engaging content to inspire, educate, celebrate excellence and raise the profile of our work and our people. Working with independent filmmakers, our film content had 400,000 views across the year, driven by our Royal Gold Medal hero film based on the career of pioneering architect Yasmeen Lari, and the Stirling Prize and House of the Year films series.
One film – Saltmarsh House, on the House of the Year shortlist – was featured by YouTube as an example of outstanding and relevant architectural content, leading to over 100,000 views of that film alone. Our House of the Year film content drove traffic to architecture.com, with 107,000 page views (which was in large part due to our new content partnership with the global media brand Conde Nast).
This shows an improvement on 98,000 page views in 2022. Our flagship website architecture.com continues to be an essential source of information and content for RIBA members, as well as wider public audiences: in 2023 we had 11.5m page views and total 1.9m users.
Equity, diversity, and inclusion
We developed a range of programmes to attract a greater diversity of entrants into the profession and to equip practices and members with tools and actions to drive change.
Key achievements included:
Launching our RIBA EDI Leaders Action Group – a catalyst to building resources and tools that can be easily implemented by practices. This group shares good practice, provides mutual support and engages architects to support awareness months throughout the year, including a range of powerful Black History Month blogs and videos.
Publishing a range of professional features providing advice to practices and members on topics such as supporting colleagues observing the month of Ramadan to award winning books such as Queer Spaces.
Collaborating with a range of expert organisations to publish the Inclusive Design and Engagement Plan of Work Overlays – recognising the unique role architects have in delivering a more inclusive and accessible built environment.
Influencing national policy to promote flexible routes into the profession, making it more equitable.
