The Director General's platform

I’ve got a couple of issues to write about this month, firstly, FMB is offering its members a new service and secondly, we now have a full compliment of Regional Directors to help and advise you.

 

I am pleased to advise you that the FMB has entered into an agreement with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) to provide third-party adjudication in building disputes between members and their clients. The new system is designed to provide speedy, independent and relatively inexpensive resolution of disputes that might otherwise have to be dealt with by civil action.

 

This new procedure, which is being administered by a dedicated central team based at the FMB’s Leeds office, will leave the FMB’s regional offices free to advise you in how to respond to the dispute. The old system where the complaint was managed through the regional office, could possibly have been at risk of accusations of bias from clients. From now on, any complaint form received will require the complainant to agree to go to adjudication or the FMB may refuse to deal with the grievance.

 

Members will be encouraged to use the new process as a quick and easy way of solving the problem. Compared with legal action, the costs are low – a fee of £110/hour for a maximum of 10 hours will be charged by the adjudicator who will have the power to apportion those costs if they feel that to be appropriate. The adjudicator will also be expected to make the award within 21 days of being appointed. The adjudicators will be selected by RICS from an experienced panel that have had appropriate training.

Members can use the system to their advantage as a way of getting outstanding payments from a client reluctant to settle their account. The decision of the adjudicator can be upheld by a court and the failure of a client to co-operate with the process will be seen as strong evidence by a court in the favour of the builder. Hopefully very few members ever get into disputes but if you do, your regional office will be happy to explain how the new arrangements will benefit you.

Secondly I'm pleased to report that the FMB now has a full team of Regional Directors in post. Helen Osgood joined us in Eastern Region at end of March and Richard Jenkins will take over in Wales on 1st May. Helen, Richard and the other Regional Directors and their teams across the country should be your first port of call when you need assistance from the FMB. Please keep in touch with them.

 

They are part of the service your subscription buys and they can provide you with a wealth of information. It is also important that they have feedback from you about the service you get from the FMB and the many issues that you face on a day-to-day basis about which we should know. Contact details are printed in every issue of Master Builder magazine on the Local Round-up pages and are also available on the FMB website.

We are in the process of updating our membership database, and our new system should be up and running very soon. In the meantime, the reports produced by the old system occasionally don’t pick up newly entered information. Consequently, some members may have been chased for overdue subscriptions that have actually been paid. The new system will end this problem.