No design in V&A case

Contractors arrested following allegations of fraud at the Victoria & Albert Museum are unlikely to be design groups, says the Metropolitan Police.

Five people have been arrested and bailed, two of them V&A employees (DW 29 March). The contractors were involved in projects such as carpet laying, according to Detective Constable Mark Stewart.

Design in Action has made its creative director Mark Chittenden redundant and promoted Nick Ovenden and Elaine Barbrook to new senior creative posts.

DIA managing director Barry Salter claims Chittenden’s redundancy is the result of restructuring at the Lopex-owned group.

“We had discussions following a creative restructuring designed to reflect the new two-group structure in the studio,” says Salter. The group’s brand development and corporate communications arms are now headed by Ovenden and Barbrook respectively. Both become creative directors.

The new structure made Chittenden’s role redundant, says Slater, who denies rumours that a personality clash was key in

Chittenden’s departure. Chittenden, who had been with DIA since its inception in 1984, was unavailable for comment.

A DIA spokesman claims Chittenden was not offered one of the new creative director posts as “it never got to that. [Chittenden] had already decided he could not adapt to the split roles”.

David Gray, DIA’s director of planning, has also left. The DIA spokesman says Gray “accepted redundancy because he felt the planning role had changed”. Derrick Lala from marketing group Lala & Wood will replace Gray.