A lot of hard work has gone into the latest RICS commentary about the role of the expert witness. It is the fifth edition of this professional standard, titled RICS Surveyors Acting as Expert Witnesses, and you can access it free online on the RICS website. 

There is a dominant four-letter word in all the 70 or so pages; it is “must”. The RICS member must comply with “musts” or must be chastised, or even thrown out of the club. True, the numerous “musts” (just short of 100), sometimes give way to “must nots”. Then “should” has a go at nudging the “musts” off the pitch.

The document’s title is probably inaccurate. Rather than being about “surveyors acting as expert witnesses”, I suspect it is limited to RICS members giving expert opinion as to surveying. The RICS can only express opinion or state what it believes to apply to the profession of a surveyor. It’s a narrow tramline.

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