Lekia Lebari-Orleans, who has run Liverpool-based Octo Architects since 2018, is now unable to call himself an architect for nine months after being sanctioned by the ARB for the second time in just over a year.
The suspension comes after Lebari-Orleans sent emails to a former client on 5 August 2024 demanding £8,438 for use of drawings his practice had produced, as well as further payment of £1,406 for an outstanding invoice and £54,412 of interest on top.
The client had terminated its agreement with Octo Architects just five days earlier. The practice had been designing changes to a detached 1960s garden house, including creating an open-plan space, converting a garage into a utility room and relocating the downstairs toilet.
The client said they were no longer prepared to work with Octo after Lebari-Orleans had ‘lied about having submitted’ a planning application to the council, before later saying he would only lodge an application upon payment, the ARB heard.
The client told the ARB’s Professional Conduct Committee (PCC) that the request for more than £60,000 was ‘deeply distressing’ for her and her partner, according to a judgement published by the architecture regulator.
The document also reveals that a senior ARB member wrote to Lebari-Orleans in late August 2024, warning him to stop pursuing his client for the vast interest sum.
‘You would appear to be labouring under a misunderstanding of how interest works,’ they said.
‘If the contract stipulates that interest will be charged at a daily rate equivalent to 10 per cent, this means that the annual rate of 10 per cent is charged in daily rate units. So, for example, a debt of £1,406 plus VAT at 10 per cent would be £168.70 a year.’
‘While we do not intend to intervene in any legal proceedings, we are obligated to inform you that you have misapplied how late payment is calculated, and to persist with such a claim would in our view demonstrate a lack of integrity.’
At a hearing held between 3 and 11 July, Lebari-Orleans told the PCC said that he genuinely believed he was entitled to the sums he had asked for, including the £54,412 of interest.
He said he had spoken to a friend who was a fund manager and received preliminary advice from a solicitor, but could not afford the fees for further advice. He said he used an online interest calculator to apply a 10 per cent per day charge to the £1,406 sum.
The PCC found that Lebari-Orlean’s demand for the interest payment ‘fell just short of dishonesty,’ as he may have believed he was entitled to the ‘excessive’ and ‘shockingly high’ sum.
However, it said his actions ‘lacked integrity’ as a professional should take ‘significant care before claiming such a large sum from a former client on the basis that a relatively small invoice had accrued so much interest’.
The committee also found that Lebari-Orleans had been ‘dishonest’ and ‘misleading’ when he told his client that he had submitted a planning application, despite knowing that he had not.
The PCC decided to suspend Lebari-Orleans from the Architects Register for nine months after taking into account that it was his second disciplinary hearing, having already been fined £2,500 last year.
In that case the PCC found that Lebari-Orleans had failed to provide documents to which a client was entitled, failed to act without undue delay and failed to keep a client informed of the progress of work.
Lebari-Orleans has been contacted for comment.