Nicholas Paplexandrakos, 42, was fined for £2,000 following delays and ‘inadequate and at times non-existent’ communication on a project for an inexperienced client who was under personal and emotional pressure.
An ARB committee hearing, held across several dates between May and July, found that Paplexandrakos made several violations of the Architects Code over the months he worked on the job in 2022-2023. This was deemed to have created a ‘significant risk of harm to the [client] and the wider public’s confidence in the profession’.
Paplexandrakos was hired by a client in June 2022 on an ‘urgent’ project to modernise her home and make it suitable to take care of her father, with whom she lived. Issues with the contract she signed, coupled with failures to communicate and unwarranted delays, led to her making a complaint to the ARB in 2024.
Due to her father’s poor health, the client was under significant personal and emotional pressure to have the work completed on time. However, the ARB found that Papalexandrakos caused an ‘undue delay’ to the project, taking some five weeks to deliver technical drawings which ‘all the evidence suggests should have been completed in a week’.
Although he may have had his own personal and health matters to deal with, it was judged that Papalexandrakos failed to communicate this with his client and took days to respond to her request for an update.
During this time, Papalexandrakos was being paid £8,000 a month, to a total of £24,000, on a contract that lacked essential elements such as insurance statements, complaints handling and dispute resolution clauses, nor provision for damages in case of delay.
The contract arranged with builders was also poorly drawn up, with missing addresses and a failure to explain key terms to the client, who was not even consulted on the details.
These issues amounted to a determination of unacceptable professional conduct. However, the committee’s decision was mitigated by Papalexandrakos’s reported ‘good character’ and the fact that the situation did not result in any actual harm. The violations were also treated as a single incident, despite occurring over several months, rather than indicative of a pattern of poor behaviour.
But the committee was ultimately satisfied that there was a significant risk of harm posed to the referrer’s, and to the wider public’s, confidence in the profession.
Papalexandrakos set up PPLX Architects in 2019 following his first registration with the ARB, and is currently listed as a director of PPLX investments.