RIBA presidential election: rule change blocks new members from voting

Voting for the next RIBA president, as well as for the next president of the Royal Society of Architects in Wales and 13 council seats, opens on 28 June with results being announced on 2 August.

But new RIBA members will be excluded from the ballots due to a change in rules which states that those voting must have joined 10 or more days before the official notice of the election – published on 3 May.

The previous rules simply stated that: ‘The electorate shall comprise the current members of RIBA in all categories (save for Honorary Fellows).’

Although the new version also says that the ‘electorate shall comprise all the current members of RIBA’ there is an additional clause in the 2022 rules which states: ‘Reference to “members” means individual members of the RIBA who have been admitted to the relevant category of membership of the RIBA at least 10 days before the publication of the notice of election.’

The Future Architects Front (FAF), a group that campaigns for workers’ rights in architecture, described the change to election rules as ‘an outrageous lack of transparency’ and ‘exclusionary tactics’.

The rule change comes after FAF and other early-career architects, students and activists selected Mace employee Muyiwa Oki to run as an architectural worker candidate in the forthcoming presidential election.

Charlotte Wayment, an architecture student at the University of Edinburgh, tweeted: ‘I finally joined as a student member as I felt it was worthwhile joining to support Muyiwa Oki and was floored to find out [about the rule change].’

Dani Reed, an architect at Child Graddon Lewis, meanwhile tweeted: ‘Beyond Frustrating. I’ve finally signed up, and these new rules mean I’m not eligible to vote!’

A spokesperson for FAF told the AJ: ‘Our main concern is that this is unprecedented – it appears to be a totally new policy, introduced during the election that most threatens the status quo of the RIBA.

‘New members who are enthusiastic to create a more progressive future for the institute have been silenced – and this will only further entrench the irrelevance of RIBA and its role as a regressive gatekeeper of the profession.’

RIBA president Simon Allford used a column in the RIBA Journal, published 3 May, to urge architects to ‘join the election process', lamenting that ‘too few of our members vote’.

RIBA board member Sumita Singha told the AJ that the rule change has been passed by RIBA council, adding that while there is a problem with student turnout, new members should participate beyond voting. Singha was speaking in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the RIBA.

‘It's great that FAF are creating awareness amongst the student electorate about the presidential elections as last time less than 7 per cent [of student members] voted – [so] we need that,’ she said.

‘But the election rule in [its] final version was approved unanimously at the last council meeting where student members were present. Even then, you need to be consistently engaged – becoming a member 10 days before the election announcement may not be the most effective way.’