# The Employer Case The one-page case for approving this as a training expense: what it costs, what a referral costs, and what is guaranteed. Written for whoever signs off the spend. Checked on 20 July 2026 against the RICS UK assessment session calendar, professional fee schedule and resit policy, as transcribed in docs/interboard-apc-offer.md section 4. Always confirm against the current guidance for your own route. From The APC Candidate Guide: Cases to Conversation. Interboard is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by RICS, IChemE, or any awarding body, and does not guarantee any assessment outcome. --- Someone in your team is preparing for the RICS APC final assessment and has asked you to approve the cost of preparing for it. This page is the case for that, written for whoever signs off training spend rather than for the candidate. ## The short version One payment of £497. A single referral costs £458 in published fees before anything else is counted, and the fees are the small part: RICS runs 2 UK sittings a year, so a referral is roughly a 6-month wait for the next one. That wait is spent on the same submission, by the same person, inside your working hours. ## What you would be approving From Cases to Conversation: APC Candidate's 6-Week Accelerator. One payment, in GBP. Not a subscription and nothing recurring. Access runs to their interview date plus 30 days, which covers the wait for the result. It is rehearsal, not another course to watch: - Unlimited full-format mock interviews, run in the shape of the real hour, at whatever hour they are free. Nothing to book. - The questioning is built from their own submission, not from a generic bank. - A competency-graded debrief and a full transcript after every session. - Targeted drills on whatever those debriefs rate weakest. - A written lesson track and candidate guide behind all of it. ## What a referral costs | What | Cost | Why it lands | | --- | --- | --- | | Referral fee | £285 | Charged to sit the final assessment again. | | Another year of candidate subscription | £173 | It keeps running through the wait, whatever happens at the panel. | | **Published fees, one referral** | **£458** | Before any of the delay below is counted. | Both figures checked 20 July 2026: - Referral fee: rics.org/candidates/assessment-information/assessment-applications/uk - Another year of candidate subscription: rics.org/join-rics/join-fees From 1 January 2026 the assessment framework allows 4 attempts, plus 1 more after a further 12 months of additional experience. Every sitting spends one of a fixed number. These dates are RICS's and preparing with us does not move any of them. We can get you ready for the hour. The date, the attempt and the decision stay theirs. The rest of the cost is yours rather than theirs, and none of it appears on a fee schedule: a second run at the same submission, another block of preparation inside working hours, study leave repeated, and another sitting before they can sign off work at chartered level. Only you can price those, because they turn on chargeout and cover rather than on a published fee. A wider figure is sometimes quoted for a referral, and we publish it as an estimate rather than as a fact: £4,000 to £8,500. The fees above, plus a year of the pay step that chartership is claimed to bring. Two reasons to treat it as an estimate: - The pay-step claim is the awarding body's own and carries no date. - Independent recruiter benchmarks for the same step vary widely. The fee table above is the part that is published, dated and checkable. It is the number to weigh this against. ## What is guaranteed Changed your mind, no reason needed, full refund: 14 days or 2 full mocks, whichever comes first. That rung is unconditional: no reason required and no conditions attached. The Chartered Guarantee runs beyond it, and it is conditional on our readiness programme rather than on their result. The rungs are quoted below exactly as the candidate is shown them, so the word "you" in them means the candidate rather than you: 1. **The window you buy** (you pay £497). Complete the readiness programme inside it: 6 full mock interviews, your full lesson track, and drills on every competency your debriefs rated red. 2. **Referred? The next window is free** (you pay £0). Full access for the next sitting, retargeted at exactly what your referral report found. Complete the readiness programme again. 3. **Referred again? So is the one after** (you pay £0). Same terms, retargeted at the newer report. Complete the readiness programme again. 4. **Still not chartered? Your money back** (we refund £497). Complete the readiness programme in all 3 windows and, if you are still not chartered, we refund the full £497. If Interboard ceases trading, the unused part of what you paid for the current window is refunded. That is an honest statement of what we owe rather than a fund held in escrow, and you should weigh a promise that runs for years on that basis. Every condition in full: https://interboard.co.uk/guarantee ## We will not write your submission. RICS restricted generative AI in submission writing in June 2025. We will not sell you a rule breach, and we will not help you edge up to one. We interrogate what you wrote. We never author it. If your organisation has a position on the use of AI in professional assessments, that paragraph is the one to read it against. We interrogate a submission the candidate has already written. We do not draft it, redraft it or improve it, and there is no feature here that would. ## What we are not claiming We do not promise an assessment outcome and nothing here should be read as one. What is promised is preparation, and the guarantee above turns on the work the candidate completes rather than on the panel's decision. Interboard is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by RICS, IChemE, or any awarding body, and does not guarantee any assessment outcome. ## Approving it - One payment of £497 by card. A VAT receipt and invoice are available from the candidate's billing settings straight afterwards. - Questions before you approve it: support@interboard.co.uk - The whole offer, with the price and every condition: https://interboard.co.uk/pricing The fees, the cadence and the attempt cap on this page were checked on the date at the top of it, and all three are RICS's to change. Confirm anything load-bearing against their current guidance before you rely on it.