I successfully applied for planning permission last year to convert a townhouse garage into habitable space. Whilst often no planning permission is required for this, there are special parameters around parking on my street which meant I needed to apply. The street is a row of about 20 identical (not mirror-image) townhouses in a row. As part of my submission, I engaged an architect to draw up plans, costing around £1k. A neighbour on the street is in the process of selling their house and the prospective owner has just applied for planning permission to do the same work. The planning drawings are identical to mine, other than that the architect's details have been hidden with some different text - it looks like that was done with a white box in powerpoint or paint. This is essentially theft of intellectual property although I feel it may be hard to prove. Do I have any leg to stand on to seek compensation? Thanks for your help!

Hi all We were planning extension to our house and found some architects online and contacted them for the survey and what is possible in terms of extension. Now i've had 4 architects in my home for the initial survey and mock drawings but i havent signed contract with any of them. The initial visit/survey to the house is like an opportunity to asses the work and then quote. Now when i refused this one architect, she is retrospectively asking me to pay for her survey and drawings even though i haven't used her drawings at all. She says i agreed to a price on the phone, which is like when someone tells you this is how much it is going to cost you if you hire my services. What i told her was that i'm ok with the prices you are quoting but i have to see the drawings before hiring your services. Now she is sending threatening emails of taking me to court and harassing me unnecessarily. Fact is that i never signed any contract nor did i agree to hiring her in anyway. In fact we are still looking at options to extend our house. Can someone please advise how can i report this architect for unethical, unprofessional conduct and deliberate harassment? Can she actually file a case against me even though i have not agreed to a contract verbally, via email or signed any papers ? I'm really stressed out. Please help. Regards MS

Hi, My parents planned to purchase a property last year subject to planning permission for rennovation. I spent hours designing the perfect home for them. We instructed an architect and we agreed a price of around £800 he put plans together based on my design. The plans were rejected by planning based on the comments of 2 neighbours - so we had to amend the design and resubmit. We got the permission, but not without a lot ot stress, time and expense - the architects bill was £2000 in the end! Then the sale on my parents house fell through and they were unable to purchase the property. The architect assured us that the plans and our planning permission could not be used and the person that was now buying the property liked my design and wanted to approach us to purchase the plans. But once he found out the cost (which was considerably higher because of all the architects visits to the planners and a redraw), we didn't hear anything. The buyers have gone ahead with the build, put in a very small amendment and have been granted permission based on our application. No changes have been been made to the plans, but they did not have permission from us to use them. The architect's name is on the planning application, I can only assume that he has double crossed us as he promised that he would not allow them to use the plans unless they paid half of the fees. He may be on holiday - but he hasnt replied toe me yet. This is unethical at best, but I have no idea if we have any legal rights as even though the architect owns the copyright - it was all based on my thorough design. Does anyone know where I stand legally - can I do anything or is it legal to just use someone's planning permission? It is very annoying to have been landed with all the bills, whilst either the buyer gets off scot-free, or the architect gets more money for the job we paid him to do for us. Thanks