Grenfell Tower has been edited out of a TV advert in a move described as “insulting” by a family bereaved by the June 2017 disaster.
Karim Mussilhy, whose uncle Hesham Rahman was among 72 people who died as a result of the fire, noticed the edit while watching the Channel 4 streaming service on Monday when an advert for the pain relief gel Voltarol showed people playing football on the Westway football pitches close to the council block.
But while two other nearby council towers were left in the picture, Grenfell, shrouded in white sheeting and topped with a banner saying “forever in our hearts”, had disappeared.
“It was really upsetting,” said Mussilhy. “It seems nobody wants to see it any more, that it’s an eyesore. The vibe I feel is that [people] want it gone.”
Mussilhy said that on closer inspection with his wife they noticed what appeared to be telltale editing marks on the image. The Westway sports centre where the advert was filmed was used as a relief base in the aftermath of the fire.
The advert was commissioned by Haleon, a consumer health company, and has also been running on Channel 4’s terrestrial channel.
Asked by the Guardian to comment on the removal of the tower, a spokesperson for Haleon confirmed the editing had happened and said: “We are deeply sorry for any distress that our recent Voltarol advertisement may have caused. We will be taking the advert off air with immediate effect.”
It is understood that the advert was intended for foreign as well as UK markets and that fed into the decision to edit out the tower.
The incident comes at a sensitive moment for bereaved families and survivors, some of whom are feeling increasing frustration that the disaster is being forgotten by the general public despite no individuals or companies yet being held accountable by criminal prosecutors for acts and omissions that led to the devastating blaze.
Mussilhy said he immediately recognised the scene as he had grown up playing football on the artificial pitches, which are frequently used by members of the Grenfell community in North Kensington. This, he said, made the editing decision particularly upsetting.
This week, the Grenfell Tower public inquiry announced it would not be ready to publish its final report before the seventh anniversary of the fire, as it had initially hoped. This means a further delay to police processes that could lead to criminal charges of corporate manslaughter and gross negligence being brought in the wake of a refurbishment using materials that were combustible.
Meanwhile, government funding for a permanent memorial on the site of the tower has not yet been finally agreed. In November the Grenfell Tower memorial commission proposed creating a garden, as well as a tall monument and a structure to protect visitors from the weather.
In February, the commission warned that providing a design brief to architects for the memorial was not yet possible without “greater certainty around the budgetary framework and about what the commitments made by government will mean in practice”.
At the time the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities said: “We will provide funding for the memorial, and we are working closely with the commission to agree how we can best support this important work and agree the next steps to take the recommendations forward.”
