Karma Comes Around For Mark Anderson?
Before he joined East Kent Housing (EKH), Mark Anderson (pictured) former Director of Property, had according to his Linkedin page, seventeen jobs between 1985 and June 2016.
One of these seventeen jobs he held was Interim Executive Director of Assets & Regeneration for Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), between Apr 2011 and Feb 2013.
In 2012 is when the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower begun, Mr Anderson was in the thick of the negotiations to bring on board the Architects – Studio E.
At the beginning of this month the Grenfell Enquiry part 2 began hearing evidence from Studio E. On the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of March 2020, the transcripts show Mark Anderson’s name was mentioned on twelve occasions over the 3 days.
In short the inquiry heard that Studio E (see page 17) – the architect for the building – manipulated its fees to avoid the contract being put out to open tender.
Studio E proposed to Mark Anderson, the director of assets and regeneration at the TMO, “a 50% deferment of all stage D fees to keep the total stage D fee below £174k”.
Studio E’s architect told the inquiry:
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“I understood that this limit was the maximum contract value permissible under EU procurement regulations, above which KCTMO would have to follow a compliant procurement process in selecting consultants. Such a process might involve advertising and tendering the opportunity publicly or using consultants from an approved framework list.”
So in short, no tender occurred and no due diligence was done on Studio E. Had due diligence been done they would have discovered none of the Studio E architects had experience of over-cladding projects.
Moving on, Mr Anderson was Interim Regional Director of Property Services (South) for Circle Housing between Oct 2013 – Apr 2015. This is where Mark Anderson met Deborah Upton as she too was working at Circle Housing during this period, ( –
Issues regarding poor maintenance and overcharging at Circle Housing began to emerge via tenants as early as Feb 2014. Mr Anderson was responsible for maintenance and repairs. In Feb 2014 he informed the Wimbledon Times:
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“We are working closely with our customers to identify, investigate and resolve any issues across the estate and consult with them on all associated costs.”
Hopefully, his past actions/inaction will catch up with him. Do readers of Shepway Vox believe Mark Anderson is suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
You may well be right doggerbank but there must also be a little bit of the “ Upton failure to govern, facilitation of fraud and bring in the puppets that have made a career out of blowing smoke up her a#%e” effect