Boycott firms criticised by Grenfell inquiry, says TV architect Clarke

Grenfell United and the TV architect George Clarke are calling on businesses and homeowners to take a “moral decision” and boycott the companies criticised in the Grenfell inquiry for “systematic dishonesty”.

- Jessica Murray

Clarke, best known for his series George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, said he had made the decision not to use products from Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex. The three companies were heavily criticised in the Grenfell report published last year and have continued to deny wrongdoing.

“I have personally made the moral decision to not use any of those companies’ products in any of my projects,” he said. “I’ve also reached out to all the consultants and companies I work with, people I’ve associated with as friends and in the profession to say: ‘Please don’t use them.’ We can all sit around and wait for criminal proceedings to happen, and we need to do that. We’ve got to follow due process. But the inquiry proved those companies were dishonest, so people have to make their own moral judgment.”

Clarke lives near the tower block in west London where 72 people were killed by the 2017 blaze that was fuelled by combustible insulation and cladding that did not comply with regulations.