Mark Allen receives an apology from the Independent
Mark Allen represented by Carruthers Law has secured the following Apology, damages and legal costs from the Independent.
On 1st July 2017 we published an article entitled “Director of Grenfell Tower cladding company ‘is government adviser’”.
At the time, Mark Allen was the technical director of Saint-Gobain UK who manufactured the Celotex insulation which was installed in Grenfell Tower. The article may have given readers the wrong impression that Mr Allen was in some way culpable for the Grenfell fire. This was not the case. Mr Allen was not a Company Board Director of Saint-Gobain and had no responsibility for the design, specification or manufacture of the Celotex insulation or its use or sale, his expertise and employment as an architect being in an unrelated discipline.
The article also stated that Mr Allen was a member of the Building Regulations Advisory Committee (“BRAC”), a public body which advises the Government on building regulations and standards for the design and construction of buildings. Readers may have been under the impression that Mr Allen had acted improperly and also in conflict of interest, by being a member of BRAC at the same time as serving as the technical director of Saint-Gobain UK, which was selling its products to local authorities for use in their high-rise buildings. Again, we accept that this was not the case. Mr Allen was only appointed to BRAC on 27th May 2017, just over 2 weeks prior to the Grenfell Tower fire and had never attended a meeting of BRAC.
We accept that Mr Allen should not have been mentioned in the article and we apologise for the distress this has caused him and we are happy to put right this mistaken impression. We have agreed to pay Mr Allen damages and his legal costs.