Jonathan O’Neill OBE
1963- 2023
AN APPRECIATION
Jonathan came to work for the FPA in 1992 as Marketing Manager. He had a background in bloodstock insurance and was one of the few people on the FPA staff to have worked for an insurer. He was highly effective in promoting the Association and its campaigns and can take a great deal of the credit for lessening the FPA’s dependence on subsidies by increasing its income from publications, training and consultancy.
Jonathan took over running the FPA in 1998 firstly as General Manager than as Managing Director and can be credited with ensuring the future of the organisation when its parent body, the LPC was dissolved in 1998.
As the longest serving head of the FPA by some way, Jonathan can take the credit for taking an organisation reliant on significant funding by the insurers into what it is today, a major independent player in the UK’s fire safety world.
The FPA always had to strike a balancing act between the other main players in fire safety: the government, the fire service, the insurers and the fire industry. When he took over it was still very much focussed on promoting fire safety in industrial and commercial buildings leaving life safety (especially in domestic settings) to the fire service. Jonathan managed to refocus the Association’s limited resources to allow it to participate in much wider fields including playing a central role in the formation and management of the Fire Sector Federation. Jonathan was also active in CFPA-Europe, the Arson Control Forum, as well as several government advisory boards. His input into the debate on reforming building regulations and the construction industry was well received by all.
We all knew that he had been unwell, but he had soldiered on despite this and so his untimely death at the age of 60 came as a great shock especially to me as I had hoped that his cancer was in remission. However, he leaves the FPA as an effective, efficient and influential body and while his shoes will be hard to fill, whoever has the honour to become the sixth boss of the FPA will inherit a world-class organisation.
My thoughts are with his wife and family.
Stewart Kidd
… Stewart was Director of the FPA from 1989-1997