Terms of use

Architect Search is a service provided by Lamb Building Consultancy Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 14819400), whose registered and correspondence address is International House, 64 Nile Street, London N1 7SR. "Architect Search" is the name of the service; the company you contract with is Lamb Building Consultancy Ltd. "We" and "us" mean that company.

These terms apply when you use Architect Search, whether you are browsing, sending an enquiry or listing a practice. If you do not accept them, please do not use the service. You can reach us at hello@architectsearch.co.uk.

Architect Search is a directory that helps homeowners find architects and architectural designers for residential projects, and gives practices a way to be found.

We are not the architect or architectural designer, we do not provide design, planning, project management or building services, we do not act as agent for either side, and we are not a party to any appointment you go on to make. We do not guarantee the competence, qualifications, insurance, availability, conduct or work of any practice listed, or the outcome of any project.

Anyone may browse the directory. You must be at least 18 to create an account or send an enquiry. Professional accounts are for practices working in the UK and should be opened by someone authorised to act for the practice.

Keep your account details secure. You are responsible for what is done through your account.

You choose which practice to contact. The information you put in an enquiry is sent to that practice so it can reply to you directly, and we keep a copy so we can operate the service and help if there is a query about it.

Sending an enquiry does not create a contract or an appointment. We cannot guarantee that a practice will reply, or how quickly, or that it will be available, suitable or affordable for your project. Any appointment you make is between you and the practice. Please do not include sensitive personal information in an enquiry.

You are responsible for your listing. The information and images you submit must be accurate, not misleading and kept reasonably up to date. Coverage areas, project types and budget information should reflect work your practice genuinely does, credentials should be represented accurately, and you must be entitled to publish everything you upload.

We do not independently check every statement in a listing, and we are not responsible for its accuracy.

In the UK the title "architect" is protected under the Architects Act 1997: broadly, it may only be used in business or practice by a person registered with the Architects Registration Board. Architect Search lists both architects and architectural designers, and listings show which a practice is. Architectural designers are not presented as architects.

We are not a regulator or a professional body. Where a listing shows a credential such as ARB registration or RIBA Chartered Practice status, it appears because the practice has told us it holds it; we do not operate an independent verification process. Homeowners should check the ARB and RIBA registers and confirm details with the practice directly.

We may ask a practice for supporting information, correct how a practice is categorised, request changes, and suspend or remove a listing that misrepresents titles or credentials.

We look at listings before they are published, and may publish a listing, ask for changes, or decline it. Review is a check on suitability and presentation for the directory. It is not accreditation, a recommendation, an endorsement, a check of competence or a check of insurance, and it does not make us responsible for what a listing says.

The Basic plan is currently free and provides a complete directory listing, a full profile and homeowner enquiries. Practices may also choose a paid plan:

Featured adds your project photography to how your practice appears in search results, gives greater prominence in relevant searches including a clearly labelled Featured placement, and adds eligibility for rotating exposure on our homepage.

Paid plans affect prominence only. A practice must still be relevant to a homeowner's search to appear at all, and relevance depends on the criteria the homeowner chooses. Paid prominence is commercial placement, not an endorsement, recommendation or approval by us.

We do not guarantee any particular position, continuous placement, a share of impressions or clicks, a number of homepage appearances, enquiries, projects or any commercial return. Visibility varies with how many homeowners are searching for work like yours, the criteria they use, how many other eligible practices there are, the space available and normal operation of the service.

We may limit how many Featured placements are available, change how homepage promotion is presented, and change or withdraw plans in future.

Paid plans are sold to practices for business purposes. Prices are shown in pounds sterling on our plans page: Featured is £49 a month. Prices are tax inclusive: £49 is the total charged each month, including any applicable VAT, with nothing added at checkout.

Payments are processed by Stripe. We remain the supplier of the directory subscription. Payment details are handled by Stripe and we do not store full payment card details. Billing management, including cancellation, is provided through Stripe.

Paid visibility becomes available once payment has been successfully confirmed, which is usually quick but may take a short time. Plans are monthly subscriptions that renew automatically each month, and charging continues until you cancel. There are no annual plans at present.

You can cancel at any time. Cancelling stops future renewals; your paid visibility normally continues to the end of the billing period you have already paid for, after which your practice returns to Basic unless another paid arrangement applies.

We do not refund part of a billing period simply because you cancel during it. If you have been charged twice or charged in error, contact us and we will put it right. Any statutory rights you have are unaffected.

You can move up or down between plans at any time. A change takes effect according to the billing arrangement shown to you when you make it.

If a payment fails, it may be retried. Your paid features may continue while that happens and will end if the payment cannot be collected, at which point your practice returns to Basic. We do not delete a listing because a payment has failed, although we may suspend paid features until payment is resolved.

We may change future prices, plan names, the features included in a paid plan, how visibility is presented, the layout of the site and what is available. We will give existing paid subscribers reasonable advance notice of a material price increase or a material reduction in the service included in their plan, and you may cancel before it takes effect.

Basic is free today. If that changes, we will give existing listings reasonable notice first.

You keep ownership of your text, images, portfolio content and branding. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, format, resize, display and distribute that material through Architect Search, and to use it to promote your listing and the directory. The licence lasts while your content is on the service and for a short period afterwards while copies are cleared from backups and caches.

You confirm that you are entitled to grant that licence and that publishing the material does not infringe anyone else's rights.

The Architect Search name, brand, site design, software, editorial content and the directory as a compilation belong to us or our licensors. Nothing in these terms transfers any of those rights to you.

Do not publish unlawful, infringing or misleading content, impersonate a person or practice, claim credentials you do not hold, send spam or false enquiries, use the service fraudulently or abusively, or interfere with its security or proper working.

Do not systematically scrape, copy or extract listings or other directory content by automated means, or use extracted content to build a competing directory or database. This does not affect ordinary search engine indexing or normal personal or business use of the site.

We may request changes, return a listing for correction, suspend paid visibility, unpublish a listing, suspend an account or remove content where content is misleading, inaccurate or unlawful, where credentials appear to be misused, where payment for paid features is unresolved, where these terms are seriously breached, or where we need to protect the security or integrity of the directory.

For ordinary issues we will normally contact you and give you a chance to put things right first. Where the problem is only a failed payment, this normally affects paid features rather than your free Basic listing.

You can stop using Architect Search at any time. Practices can cancel paid visibility through billing management, and can delete their account from their account page.

Deleting an account is immediate and permanent. It removes your listing and its photographs from the directory, cancels any paid visibility subscription without a refund for the part month already paid, deletes the enquiries your listing received, and prevents you signing in again. Keep any enquiry details you still need before you delete.

We keep a minimal record that the listing was deleted, together with billing and accounting records we are required to hold. Our privacy notice explains how long.

We aim to keep Architect Search available, but we do not promise uninterrupted service. It may be unavailable during maintenance, because of a fault, or because of a problem with a service we rely on, and we may change or withdraw features.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Subject to that, we are not responsible for the acts, omissions, advice, fees, work or conduct of any practice, for decisions you take in reliance on listing information or an enquiry, for project outcomes, for loss of profit, business, goodwill, enquiries or anticipated savings, for indirect or consequential loss, or for interruption to the service caused by matters beyond our reasonable control.

Where you pay us for a plan, our total liability to you for all claims arising in any 12-month period is limited to the amount you paid us in that period. Where you have not paid us anything, our total liability to you is limited to £100.

If you are using Architect Search as a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected.

If a third party brings a claim against us that arises directly from material you supplied for publication, because it infringed their rights, was materially misleading or was unlawful, you will be responsible for our reasonable losses and costs arising from that claim. We will tell you about any such claim promptly and will not settle it without consulting you.

You may not transfer your account or subscription to another practice without our agreement. A listing gives you no exclusivity in any area, category or position, and no entitlement to a particular ranking position apart from the paid placements described above. We may transfer our rights and obligations if our business is reorganised or sold.

If part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest continues to apply. We may update these terms as the service develops; the date at the top will change, and we will give paid subscribers advance notice of material changes.

These terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, subject to any consumer rights that cannot be excluded.

Questions about these terms: hello@architectsearch.co.uk.