RICS Reviews 

They have the worst system via their stupid site. Don't even try to register on their site, you will lose your time.

Certainly doesn’t represent its members, but it will censure, threaten and burden them while letting it’s intended profession fall away to other trades. Useless and parasitic.

My professional body. A constant source of frustration and disappointment; too many anecdotes to mention.

Sort it out please, you have been reviewed to death, you know what’s wrong

In brief and in my experience the RICS are a woefully incompetent and negligent organisation who do little to hold crooked members to account.

I complained about a member firm and provided pages and pages of evidence detailing their falsified and non-compliant valuation reports and other documents used in court proceedings.

The first RICS complaint handler took 3 months to review and dismissed the complaint despite the evidence. They had no understanding of the basic RICS rules to which a member must adhere.

An investigation by a manager into how this RICS employee handled my complaint and the evidence confirmed the RICS employee required further training and had failed to do their job properly.

Things then got much worse.

My complaint about the regulated member led to an investigation by a “Lead Investigator” who then took the word of the regulated member over and above the written evidence. By way of just one example, none of the valuation reports by the regulated member were signed by an RICS member and yet the regulated member told the RICS they were countersigned. The RICS ignored the physical copies of the reports proving there was no counter signature and simply took the word of the regulated member. By doing so, the RICS dismissed my complaint.

The matter remains “live” and I am pressing for a through internal investigation into how not one but, two RICS employees have failed to do their job and currently allowed a regulated member to tell them bare faced lies!

I also hope the Estates Gazette and press will take notice.

Being a member of the RICS evidently means very little when their own regulator does not understand their own rules and takes no action against regulated firms abusing their status, a status the members of the public who pay their fees should be able to trust.

RICS standards aren't worth anything to the general public. I had a surveyor who missed nearly £50,000 of work. When I complained a partner in the firm came to view their mistakes and said they would get back to me. I never heard from them again as they hid behind their lawyers. RICS felt this was fine as they had sent me a piece of paper with their complaints procedure on it. The fact that they knew they had made errors and refused to issue their conclusions from the second visit as promised was irrelevant according to RICS. I suggest that anyone getting a survey from a RICS regulated surveyor gets additional insurance in case of their negligence.

Unfortunately I must agree with the majority of the reviewers who appear to be very critical of this organisation.
RICS attempts to be all things to all people but while they may stress their role as a Regulator my experience is they are only interested in defending their Members interests and are totally indifferent to the general publics complaints.
I'll keep it brief. I complained to a RICS member firm who clearly were not interested in the problems created by an inaccurate survey which cost me a considerable amount of money to prove the firm wrong and I lost the sale of my property through her actions. I then forwarded my complaint to RICS who replied suggesting I seek legal advice, which as they aware is cost prohibitive.
If you look at the RICS website they are basically a marketing organisation, with membership voluntary and they appear much more interested in promoting their services than upholding members standards and actions.
All in all, a very bad experience.

RICS advertise their Neighbour Dispute Resolution Service (NDRS) as a significantly cheaper option to pursuing a boundary dispute in court. This is not my experience. The surveyor that RICS appointed produced a report that was inaccurate and contained text that conflicted with the plans. I complained to the surveyor, who denied there was a problem, and went on to produce another plan which moved the position of a tree so that the conflict no longer existed. I complained to RICS. They said that they could not comment on the work of one of their members, but there was nothing to prevent me taking the surveyor to court. I commissioned an DGPS engineering survey, which confirmed that he had swapped the measurements of the bottom widths of the two gardens. I filed a small claim against the surveyors company, which after many months was found in my favour. During this time the surveying company denied that there was a problem with the report and stated that by commissioning a second survey, there were now two opinions. I think that it is unacceptable that a professional body like RICS has no oversight of its members and a process that it advertises. I should not have had to go to court to get a simple error corrected. Why should an observation such as the text of a report contradicting a plan in a report be a matter of opinion? Would I recommend the RICS Neighbour Dispute Resolution Service - No. It did not save me money, it created an erroneous report which I had to challenge. If (god forbid) I had another boundary dispute I would commission a GPS survey of the boundary and get that compared to the Land Registry plans and mediate with my neighbours through solicitors.

I emailed Bics, a division of RICS about one of their members using 2019 pricing data rather than their latest 2021 data. The web site said I'd get a reply in 3 days. Almost 4 weeks later I'm still waiting; the only response to date is an email saying my email was being passed on to another department. I'm still waiting despite chaser emails and phone calls.

My surveyor totally failed to note a major defect on a homebuyers survey. When I raised my concerns, he was totally dismissive.
Raised the issue with RICS, who told me that they would not be investigating my complaint.
Not sure what the purpose of this organisation is, as it does not serve the general publics interests.

Survey booked in for 4th June, received phonecall 21st May to say been done and once I received report if had any queries could contact surveyor direct (Paul Scott).
Then received the written report 22nd May. Over the moon with the efficient service and very explanatory report. Paul very helpful when I rang with a little query.
Defiantly recommend this company.