Power corrupts

I noticed that because of slum clearance in the centre of town, enormous apartment blocks were under construction at the city's edges.

"Are those private or council?" I asked.

"Council." "Amazing. Nobody builds on that scale in the UK any more. The competition to win the building contracts must be absolutely ferocious," I suggested.

"I don't think anyone believes that there is any competition," he said, philosophically.

"The whole operation is 'jobs for the boys'. Once they have a couple of big local authority contracts under their belts, they can buy themselves a football team, which is what everybody wants." Construction in the UK is not corrupt, whatever else it may be. Sometimes advantageous planning consents are granted to applicants who belong to local Round Tables when they might be refused to outsiders. But the industry is not institutionally corrupt, as it appears to be in other countries. The case of Chateauneuf du Pape on the architect's desk at Christmas is merely a tribute to his taste in wine.

In the UK, decisions by local authorities can always be challenged, and there is an established appeals procedure. Like anywhere, you have a better chance of obtaining justice if you can afford an expensive lawyer, but the building industry has never suffered a scandal similar to the chicanery in the financial services sector.

The problem over here is more the erratic quality of public authorities. Although some local authorities are very much more efficient than others, my experience is that they tend generally to stick to the same set of rules – although big variations in performance occur even within different departments in the same borough.

Dealing with the planning department is like trying to put a collar on a fish in a bath of cold Swarfega – but the same authority’s building control officers couldn’t be more helpful

I have found that dealing with the planning department can be like trying to put a collar on a fish swimming in a bath of cold Swarfega, but the same authority's building control officers couldn't be more helpful.

The opposite was the case on a recent project to reinstate a 1705 grade II-listed building to its original use as a private house. The planners were most co-operative, but as this required change of use from the clinic it had been for the past 30 years, building control chose to treat it as a new building. This meant that court procedures had to be invoked before we could agree on a compromise which didn't involve filling the whole building with lobbies and half-hour fire doors.

Even when local authorities are at their most difficult, the idea of slipping an envelope full of crisp twenties into someone's anorak pocket is anathema in this country. An architect colleague in the Far East tells me that such envelopes are required to ensure that their planning applications even get looked at. And in some Arab and African countries, sweeteners amounting to no less than half the contract sum are as everyday as looking up a site reference on an Ordnance Survey map.

Institutional probity is something we take for granted in this country. Indeed, it has been suggested that the Anglo-Saxon attitude to corruption is helping to stamp out more Latin tradition of backhanders in other parts of Europe. Yet power corrupts, and as large building corporations have already begun to take over many of the roles previously carried out by independent organisations, we may start to echo our Latin counterparts' wheelings and dealings.

For example, if the Treasury insists that best value can be achieved only if local authorities put all their development and maintenance work in the hands of one or two enormous contracting operations, it is likely that control will be lost.

The situation may arise where instead of 40 or 50 building firms sharing a billion-pound building budget, it will be offered to one or two.

Also, 30 private companies are now licensed to certify compliance with building control. Can one of these really offer the same degree of impartiality as a government employee if it is owed money by the person seeking this compliance? In such circumstances, the temptation to resort to some form of skulduggery in order to secure such valuable contracts will be increasingly hard to resist, even here.