BrewDog has responded to an open letter from former employees that alleged a toxic culture at the brewery and bar business.

Signed by a number of former staff under the collective Punks with Purpose, they said BrewDog adopted a “culture of fear”, which negatively impacted on its workforce.

In a public statement yesterday, BrewDog outlined a number of measures it intended to adopt so “not to allow the dust to settle, but to take decisive action”.

And on LinkedIn, company founder James Watt has apologised for the events which “have caused a lot of pain for all of our team members and our community” and says that he is “ultimately responsible for the culture of our business”.

He said: “The letter that ex-colleagues wrote to us is 100% my fault. To all of the signatories and to all of our team and community who were affected by the letter, I am sorry. 

“I want to be very candid about some mistakes that I have made that have detrimentally impacted our culture. In the hard and fast environment of high growth, I have all too often neglected many important people elements of our business.

“Furthermore, despite surviving C-19 due to a phenomenal effort from our amazing team I had to make some very hard decisions to ensure our survival and these decisions have taken a considerable human toll on our business and had a negative impact.

“Additionally, some PR mistakes that I have made in our past have also had a detrimental impact on culture. I can promise that I will not make these mistakes again.

“I can’t possibly have all the answers at the moment but my commitment to our team is that I am going to throw my heart and soul into working with them to fix these issues.”