An expert witness sacked from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry for wrongly describing himself as an architect has been found guilty of new misue-of-title offences barely six months after the Architects Registration Board first secured convictions against him.

John Priestley was fired from the Grenfell inquiry last summer, just days after his appointment was announced, when it emerged that he was illegally using the title “architect” because he was not on the Register of Architects and had not been since 2010.

In December, Priestley – who trades as John Priestley Associates – was fined £3,000 and told to pay a further £3,240 in costs and surcharges by Westminster magistrates after being prosecuted for misuse of title, under section 20 of the Architects Act 1997. The court was told the Arb had given Priestley “numerous” warnings about wrongly describing himself as an architect.

…