RICS publishes conflicts of interest guidance for dispute resolvers

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has published a guidance note, Conflicts of interest, aimed at RICS members who are involved in resolving disputes. This includes arbitrators, independent experts, mediators and adjudicators (defined in the note as "dispute resolvers"). The guidance note may also assist parties who instruct RICS dispute resolvers to understand RICS' procedures, particularly as it sets out how a possible conflict of interest situation should be dealt with after an appointment has been made (section 8).

The guidance note explains that RICS' overriding principle is that dispute resolvers should be impartial at the time of their appointment and remain impartial during the entire proceedings. However, that does not mean they also have to be independent of the parties. Section 5 of the note explains what it means by this. In appendix 2, it categorises example situations using a traffic light system, where:

The note acknowledges that the International Bar Association's (IBA) guidelines, Conflicts of interest in international arbitration, influenced it in adopting this approach to conflicts of interest.

Source: The guidance note is available to RICS members from its website and can be purchased from its bookshop.