Majority of London Architecture Studios Fail Living Wage Bar for Juniors

Seventeen of the 21 London studios reporting Part I architectural assistant salaries pay below the London Living Wage of £32,136 — a threshold the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) itself has declared a requirement for relevant offices. That figure comes from The Pay 100's fifth annual salary survey, published over the weekend, which collected mean annual salaries and weekly unpaid overtime hours from 127 UK firms. The anonymous group presents the numbers as rough indicators only, based on respondent submissions rather than audited payroll data.

At the top of the leaderboard sits an engineering firm, not an architecture practice. BakerHicks, an engineering and design company, paid architects with fewer than five years' experience an average of £72,000 — roughly £8,300 above the next entry. Hopkins Architects, a London studio, ranked second at £63,700. Two London practices, Samuel Chisholm Studio and Thomas Alexander Design, tied for third at £56,300.

For Part II architectural assistants — the more advanced student tier — Transport for London led at £44,000, with Foster + Partners second at £42,000.

How bad is the entry-level picture?

The Part I results cover 30 studios, 21 of them in Greater London. Only the top four — Haworth Tompkins, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Studio McW and Studio PDP — paid more than the London Living Wage. Twelve of the 30 studios paid Part I assistants less than £29,328, the UK Living Wage outside the capital. For a junior in London, that gap of roughly £2,800 against the LLW benchmark represents about £54 a week before tax — the difference between the capital's rental market being marginal and being unworkable.

The survey does not state response rates, sample sizes per firm, or whether prior years' figures were revised. Mean averages, as The Pay 100 itself notes, can be pulled by a single high earner in a small team. The numbers should be read as directional, not definitive.

What is The Pay 100 demanding from RIBA?

Alongside the data, the group published an open letter to RIBA calling for action on financial wellbeing in the profession. Its language is unusually blunt for a body that has spent five years building pay transparency from the outside.

"Poor financial conditions for staff are not merely an employment issue; they are a threat to the long-term health, resilience and future of the profession," the letter states.

The letter sets out two specific asks:

• Establish "meaningful minimum salaries" for RIBA chartered practices, with a framework across different architecture roles that increases year-on-year in line with inflation.
• Take full ownership of The Pay 100 and its annual survey, committing institutional resources and developing it into an industry-wide initiative.

"A profession cannot sustainably advocate for the value of its services while leaving the financial conditions of its workforce to market pressures alone," the letter argues.

What is not said?

The group concedes the commercial reality behind low pay. "We recognise that architecture practices operate within a highly competitive market, often under significant financial pressure themselves," it writes. "Nevertheless, the commercial challenges facing practices should not prevent the profession from addressing the deteriorating conditions experienced by many employees."

Notably, the letter does not specify what the minimum salary levels should be, nor how RIBA would enforce them against chartered practices that fall short. The survey measures mean unpaid overtime per week but the published excerpts do not rank firms on it. And RIBA has yet to respond — The Pay 100 has set a deadline of 1 December for a public answer.

The group's longer-term wager is institutional: under RIBA's stewardship, it argues, the survey "could benefit from significantly greater reach, sustained institutional support and broader participation," providing "a foundation for more comprehensive salary data, stronger engagement between employers and employees, and meaningful progress towards better financial conditions throughout the industry." Whether the institute accepts that mandate — and whether minimum salaries survive contact with a fee-pressured market — will become clearer after the December deadline.