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It was on 13 December last year that the first details of a scandal that has since engulfed the RICS began to surface. The Sunday Times revealed that a financial report into the RICS’s treasury management processes had not been shared beyond its audit committee.
After months of wrangling with the RICS management board, four non-executive directors, who had learnt of the existence of the report in early 2019, obtained a copy. The report, by accountant BDO, turned out to be damning. But, when the four directors raised concerns about how it had been handed, they were abruptly dismissed.
The reaction has been explosive. Over seven fraught weeks since the events were first exposed, the saga has torn a lid off a simmering discontent among some of the institution’s membership. Rumblings over the direction the RICS has taken over the past decade – which has seen it pursue ambitions to become a global leader in chartered surveying standards and qualifications at what som