ABSTRACT
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors took a firmly private sector perspective even while their membership was growing fast in the public sector, notably in 'the Inland Revenue, Board of Trade Transport and the Service Ministries' of central government. The Royal Institute of British Architects appeared to have addressed the growing acrimony across the private–public sector divide when it established a Salaried Members' Committee in 1928. In the private sector there was always the expectation that employed professionals would progress in their careers to the point when they put up their own 'brass plate', as Summerson had put it. As a result young professionals joined the public sector in large numbers, sacrificing the potentially higher pay and social standing of private practice for the opportunity to be useful and to work on a grand, often visionary scale. Under the Thatcher government of the 1980s public sector offices and services were dismantled and wherever possible sold off.
