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RIBA paid £150,000 to ex-president Alan Jones over press leak

Hoi-Ling MakPublished 4d ago2 min readBased on 4 sources
RIBA paid £150,000 to ex-president Alan Jones over press leak
Photo by Jeremy Buckingham / CC BY 2.0

The RIBA in London, the institute for architects, paid £150,000 to settle a legal dispute with its former president, Professor Alan Jones, over leaked information.

The figure was made public on 29 September 2026 in an Architects' Journal exclusive titled 'EXCLUSIVE: RIBA paid £150k to Alan Jones in settlement over press leak' Architects' Journal. That report is the latest published source on the case. It puts a precise sum on a matter the institute had previously described only in general terms.

Jones is a former leader of the institute. He served as president in 2019 and then continued as Immediate Past President, the outgoing president who stays on for a year to advise a successor, from 1 September 2021 to 31 August 2022, according to the RIBA's 2022 annual report RIBA. The institute's own journal refers to him as Professor Alan Jones.

The institute had called its agreement with Jones a confidential settlement. That is a private deal to end a legal claim without a court hearing or a public ruling. The wording was reported by the RIBA Journal in June 2025 in a piece titled "RIBA reaches confidential settlement with former president ..." RIBA Journal. That earlier account gave no sum.

Settlements of this kind close the legal process. There is no judge's ruling and no public finding about who was right. The payment was reported as a settlement sum, not as damages awarded by a court.

The gap in time matters here. The June 2025 note told members that a deal existed. The September 2026 exclusive told them what it cost. For a reader coming fresh to the story, that two-step release is the timeline to keep in mind.

What makes this easy to follow for anyone outside architecture is the shape of it. A dispute over a press leak, material passed to journalists without authorisation, was closed quietly. More than a year later, trade press put a £150,000 figure on that quiet exit. Readers now know the cost, even if the contents of the leak itself have not been set out in the published details.

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