Government signs UK-Swiss deal for mutual recognition of architects

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The agreement will be signed by business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch and Swiss federal councillor Guy Parmelin and is expected to come into force in the first few weeks of 2025.

It will set in stone interim arrangements which have been in place since Brexit to prevent the recognition of UK architects in Switzerland from effectively falling away overnight.

It follows a ‘landmark’ UK-US agreement signed between the Architects Registration Board (ARB) and the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) in February. The two regulators agreed to ‘streamline registration processes and reduce costs and examinations’ without compromising on safety standards.

The Swiss agreement means the UK and Switzerland will recognise each others’ professional qualifications, so UK architects will not have to requalify to work in Switzerland, and vice versa, when the interim arrangements expire at the end of 2024.

Instead, UK architects will have to complete an application for recognition and will receive a decision within four months.

Applicants will not need to be UK nationals to be recognised as architects in Switzerland, as long as they hold a UK architectural qualification. 

The deal will also safeguard the autonomy of UK regulators to independently set and maintain standards and decide who is fit to practise, according to the Department for Business and Trade (DBT).  

The standalone agreement will become the first government-to-government recognition of professional qualifications following Brexit.

The DBT said the deal, which will remain in place indefinitely, could allow British firms to compete for more contracts in Switzerland. 

Business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch said the deal between the two ‘services superpowers’ would help to grow the economy, by ‘boosting UK services exports, and encouraging new Swiss investment into the UK’. 

Christina Seilern, founder of London-based Studio Seilern Architects, who grew up in the Swiss Alps, said her upbringing was ‘instrumental’ to her architectural career, ‘which has been rooted in London for nearly two decades and encompasses important public projects and civic interventions in both countries’, including the famous Andermatt Concert Hall in Switzerland which opened in 2019. 

Seilern said: ‘As architects, our thinking and our industry are global. This agreement lowers the barriers for us to do our work, and ensures that we can continue to make meaningful contributions to our cities, economies, and communities in Switzerland and the UK.’ 

The UK and Switzerland are among the world’s leading service economies, with their services sectors each representing over 70 per cent of GDP for both economies.

In 2022 Switzerland was the UK’s seventh biggest partner for services trade, trading £24 billion of services between the two countries. 

Today’s deal follows the launch last month of government talks on a new UK-Swiss trade deal to boost trade between the two countries by removing market access barriers and improving regulatory cooperation. 

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