A “clearance to descend” (if that’s how it was interpreted) does not imply that the pilot was allowed to descend below 1000ft in IMC in a VFR aircraft.
There seems to be two mindsets commenting in this thread:
a) those that think the clearance (or lack of) was a contributing factor
b) those that know that want to blame Airservices regardless of any other information that’s put infront of them.