RICS rethinks plans to quit CIC

The turnaround, which was confirmed last week, follows pressure from some of the institution’s QS members.

The RICS announced in November that it intended to leave the council because it would be better able to influence government policy as a standalone body.

The QSs threatened to leave the RICS and form a breakaway group if the plan went ahead, and this led to emergency talks between Graham Watts, chief executive of the CIC, and Louis Armstrong, the RICS’ chief executive, in December.

Paul Morrell, chief construction adviser and former senior partner in Davis Langdon, is understood to have put pressure on the RICS to stay.

Armstrong said last week that the RICS would remain in the CIC ‘for the foreseeable future’

It is understood that Armstrong wrote to the CIC last week to say that the RICS would remain in the council “for the foreseeable future” and that its subscription fee had been paid for 2010.

In a separate row, Michael Sullivan has resigned as chair of the RICS’ QS and Construction Professional Group following a dispute over whether it should be controlled by its members or RICS officials. He has been replaced by Gleeds partner and chair elect Stuart Earl.

Sullivan, a partner in Rider Hunt, denied there was a rift, but stood down at the start of a board meeting last Friday, six months before the end of his two-year term.

Meanwhile, Michael Byng, the former head of the RICS’ QS faculty, was expelled from the body last week after a disciplinary hearing over the alleged non-payment of about £47,000 to a former employee, a subcontractor, and the Council of European Construction Economists. Byng has appealed the decision.