Swede in Surrey

I have a private client in the UK who used a Swedish-based architect to design some plans for a new house he is building in Surrey (to live in himself) and paid him 25% Swedish VAT.

However it appears the charge was wrong and that the architect should have considered UK VAT.

The total fee was £20 000 plus £5 000 Swedish VAT. My client is a city banker so not in business with any scope to reclaim the VAT through the overseas refund system. The invoice from the Swedish architect was dated 1 November 2010.

I understand that the Swedish architect has quite a lot of UK private clients and all of them have apparently been charged Swedish VAT. What is the solution to this issue?

At best we might get a 7.5% refund of...