A Dickensian Christmas

We thought they'd gone quiet, but Knott came out of the woodwork (sorry!) the other day threatening us with debt collectors.  So, debtors' prison for us over Yuletide, then...

This is our response:

Many thanks for your email of 19 December 2011 regarding the above invoice.

Firstly, you quote from my email of 24 November requesting soft copies of the plans before dealing with the corrected invoice.  My apologies for a badly drafted email written in haste [I'd written that we'd pay the corrected invoice rather than deal with the corrected invoice]; written in haste in part, I may add, due to having to respond within seven days to an invoice that had already spent some days in the post.  Obviously, not having been sent your contractual terms at any point we were unaware of your payment terms.  May I also add that even when the replacement invoice was sent by email it was dated some days previously.

Putting that aside, we still maintain that the correct, i.e. appropriate, payment of the invoice was a partial payment to reflect the fact that you have only partially completed the feasibility stage.  Without wishing to repeat the points in our letter to [Knott] of 1 December the reasons we believe you have yet to complete the feasibility stage are:

      i.        You have failed to meet the brief.  Setting aside the more subjective points in our response to your plans, given that the brief could be summed up as ‘make best use of space and light given the restrictions of the plot’, to present a design including key rooms with no natural light clearly shows that it objectively fails to meet the brief.  Another iteration of the plans was, therefore, we felt appropriate as part of the feasibility stage.

     ii.        When we met [Knott] on 14 October 2011 he agreed to discuss and clarify the council’s response to our pre-application ([Planning Officer's] letter of 10 October) and that any design presented would reflect those discussions.  At the presentation of the outline plan you confirmed that that conversation had not taken place.  If you had it is our belief that some of the most troubling aspects of the design could have been avoided.

We are disappointed that you maintain that you have completed this stage of the design satisfactorily.  We had hoped that you could take a step back and recognise that you had only partially met the brief and that, therefore, a partial payment of your fee is appropriate.  Unless we hear from you by 2 January 2012 that you are happy to draw a line under this we will look to raise this as a complaint/dispute with RIBA and/or the ARB, as appropriate.

Yours sincerely...

Fighting talk!