Hopefully someone will be able to give me some guidance.
We are hoping to have an extension put onto our semi, essentially a side return, but with additional width to the garden wall. We appointed a RIBA architect over a year ago and got planning permission last September.
We are now wanting to move forward with the detail design and asked the architect to move onto the next stage, but they wanted to change the commercial terms of the agreement we have. We agreed a contract at the start of the project to have a percentage basis above £75k - fixed below. They have so far guessed that the all in cost would be c. £125k pre VAT and have invoiced the early stages at 10.5% of this.
Part of the reason we were wanted to move forward was that building costs are starting to come down and therefore it would be likely that it would be cheaper now. The architects insisted that they would only move forward if we fixed the fee at the 10.5% of the £125K - regardless of what the end cost comes in at and also pay upfront as per the fixed fee agreements (for under £75k). We said we'd rather stick with the agreement we have as it wouldn't make sense to fixed at last years building costs today.
As of this afternoon, they have now terminated he agreement and are not willing to progress any further.
I'd like to know if anyone else has had these issues? It seems they believe that building rates are/have fallen sharply against last year and are therefore trying to escape the commercial agreement they are in, plus they may already owe us money as the first part of the contract is on a percentage basis and that has already been completed and paid.
Can anyone help/speculate?
Thanks
Kelvin
Also - if anyone knows what docs I need from them to give to another architect, that would be really useful
We are hoping to have an extension put onto our semi, essentially a side return, but with additional width to the garden wall. We appointed a RIBA architect over a year ago and got planning permission last September.
We are now wanting to move forward with the detail design and asked the architect to move onto the next stage, but they wanted to change the commercial terms of the agreement we have. We agreed a contract at the start of the project to have a percentage basis above £75k - fixed below. They have so far guessed that the all in cost would be c. £125k pre VAT and have invoiced the early stages at 10.5% of this.
Part of the reason we were wanted to move forward was that building costs are starting to come down and therefore it would be likely that it would be cheaper now. The architects insisted that they would only move forward if we fixed the fee at the 10.5% of the £125K - regardless of what the end cost comes in at and also pay upfront as per the fixed fee agreements (for under £75k). We said we'd rather stick with the agreement we have as it wouldn't make sense to fixed at last years building costs today.
As of this afternoon, they have now terminated he agreement and are not willing to progress any further.
I'd like to know if anyone else has had these issues? It seems they believe that building rates are/have fallen sharply against last year and are therefore trying to escape the commercial agreement they are in, plus they may already owe us money as the first part of the contract is on a percentage basis and that has already been completed and paid.
Can anyone help/speculate?
Thanks
Kelvin
Also - if anyone knows what docs I need from them to give to another architect, that would be really useful