Brexit: architectural woes

24/02/2021

Rafael Behr seems to be the latest commentator to accept that Keir Starmer has abandoned the fight on Brexit terrain.

Doing so, Behr writes, gets him no affection in constituencies that were lost by Labour in 2019. Thus (in England, at least), with Johnson also avoiding a fight, what Behr calls "the folly of Brexit" is being buried for excavation some time in the future, perhaps by a different political generation.

That, at least, is what Behr thinks, and what our political leaders hope – the tactics of timorous children hiding their eyes behind their hands in similar hope that the bogeyman will go away. But at least the bogeyman is fiction. Brexit isn't.

And latest in the long list of aggrieved groups to voice their concerns about the way they have been treated, thereby ensuring Brexit is not going to go away, are the architects. Typically, they make themselves heard not in the national media but in their own Architects' Journal.

In an authored piece, Patrick Richard, principal director of the architectural practice, Stanton Williams, writes under the title: "Brexit is closing doors for UK architects working in Europe", declaring that architects need to make their voices heard about the impact of Brexit. It is, he says, threatening London’s position as the global hub for international architectural services.

We were expecting something like this – one or other of the service sectors making its presence felt, other than the wandering minstrels. And here we have the architects, front and centre, complaining that the government "seems to have ignored the effect of Brexit on the creative industries, which contribute more than a quarter of the UK’s economy".

Richard makes no bones about labelling Johnson's deal as a "de facto imposed hard Brexit", as far as his industry is concerned, saying that it is "creating major challenges for architects" – and the creative sector in general – "as 40 years of complex agreements unravel into a vacuum".

As of 31 December last year, Richard writes, we have lost important freedoms, and we no longer have reciprocity of recognition for our qualifications in the EU. What was a simple administrative application is now turning into a much more complex process, with more paperwork and proofs of compliance required.

However, he seems to be under the illusion – shared by many – that this government cares enough to do something about it, or is even capable of achieving anything better than we already have.

He argues that the RIBA and ARB "need to lobby government to ensure the agreements between the UK and the EU allow architects to export their services as well as to continue to employ EU talent". Fishermen and performing artists, he notes, have rightly been vocal in fighting for their rights. We as architects should also add our voices to defend the creative industries' right to continue working seamlessly within the EU.

Working in Europe, Richard says, is in his firm's DNA. "A lot of us started our careers on the Continent", he says. Alan Stanton, the firm's founder, was part of the team on the Pompidou Centre before setting up a practice in Paris. Richard has worked in Switzerland and France prior to settling in the UK.

A significant part of the firm's "talented team comes" from the EU – bringing diversity of thought and culture that expands our horizons and enriches the debate in the studio and our work.

Thus, he says, "Europe is not just an important market for us, it is an opportunity to enrich our partnerships and experience and promote British design abroad, while bringing back home the lessons learnt".

France is a country that really values investing in culture, he avers. His firm currently has two major projects under way there – a library for the city of Clermont-Ferrand and a large housing project in Nantes, which follows our successful completion of the Museum of Art for the same city – in addition to an ongoing competition for a high-profile cultural project.

At present, the firm has no plans to open an office in Paris, although Richard says this could change. For the moment, though, they are in the process of registering the firm's principals in France. Before Brexit, that was a straightforward matter of doing it locally. Now it has to be done centrally for every project in whichever country the firm is working in. And it's a lot more complex and lengthy process.

But Richard thinks that Brexit's impact goes much further than this. London's position as the global hub for international architectural services and the city with the greatest concentration of international and UK architects in the world, is now under threat. He fears it will be a lot harder to hire European architects post-Brexit. Nor will London be as attractive to European architects as it once was.

Oddly, he is complaining about a deal which hasn't even been ratified yet, with the UK now agreeing to allow an extension to 30 April to allow the European Parliament more time to scrutinise the treaty document.

Unwittingly, the government is making a statement about its own actions in this respect, having forced through the implementing Bill in one day – an obscenely rapid process requiring the approval of MPs of a document that they cannot have possibly read properly and some of them will never understand.

However, there cannot be many instances of multiple calls for a treaty to be revised before it is even ratified, but that is the position, with the architects joining a lengthening queue.

Already in that queue is the meat industry, hoping the European Commission will look at the idea of a "bilateral EU-UK veterinary agreement", something Eustice has raised and now is raising hopes elsewhere of a New Zealand style deal.

This, we've already explored, and the best thing we can hope for is some form of "equivalence" recognition on CETA lines, which has proved of very little value to the Canadian meat industry.

Meanwhile, Pete has written a powerful piece acknowledging that we're unlikely to surmount the regulatory hurdles that stand between us and the EU's market. Therefore, he suggests that we don't even try. Instead, we should dump the corpus of EU regulation and start again.

Here, it is fascinating to see the usual dynamic take over. The slightest suggestion of walking away from EU regulation evokes immediate squeals of "lowering standards", as if EU standards were necessarily the best on offer. Yet the reason we ever suggested that we continued in the Single Market was not because we had fallen in love with EU regulation. Simply, we wanted a long transition, to enable us to create a more acceptable alternative.

Now that our politicians have ejected us from the Single Market (prematurely, in my view), we have little option but to make the best of the situation we find ourselves in. And, if the shellfish "non-ban" shows us anything, it is that we are not going to get very far playing by the EU's rules.

In seeking different (and even better) standards, that does not mean that we abandon any attempt to work with international bodies, although Covid and other influences suggest that the globalisation movement is heading for a pause – if not already there.

Should we seek to reactivate the globalisation process – and I think there are advantages in so doing – the best thing we can do is lead by example. Slavishly following down the Commission's tramlines does not seem to be the way forward.

Taking such a path will, undoubtedly, be difficult, but since we seem to be set down a difficult path already, we might as well get something positive out of it. And, as Pete points out, food production is a good place to start, with a view in the first instance of improving our own food security.

This is far from an optimal position, and there may well be a time when we can look forward to closer cooperation with our European neighbours. But, as we are out in the cold, we might as well put on an overcoat.

Also published on Turbulent Times.