SSAIB has sadly learnt that its recently retired President, Alan Needham, has passed away and we extend our sincere condolences to Alan’s family, friends and security industry colleagues. Following a distinguished army career, Alan helped steer SSAIB for some 20 years and his knowledge, experience, common sense and friendship will be sorely missed. He became SSAIB’s Chairman in 1994, prior to SSAIB’s merger with the AISC and Integrity 2000 inspectorates and continued as Chairman of the merged organisation.
More recently he became President of SSAIB after Geoff Tate took over the Chairman’s role in 2015. Alan was previously Director General of the NSCIA, which later merged with the BSIA inspectorate SSI in 1990 to form NACOSS. Alan Needham’s role with SSAIB was critical to the organisation’s success, steering it through its formative years as an ‘inspectorate’ and then as a UKAS accredited certification body.
“Alan’s contribution to SSAIB was immense and this news of his passing has left all of our staff at Whitley Bay and all our inspectors working around the UK and Ireland with a profound sense of sadness,” comments Chief Executive Alex Carmichael. “In 2015, we marked Alan’s retirement as our President by presenting him with an original painting of a lovely view from his house as a token of esteem from all at SSAIB and as a gesture of thanks for his very valuable contribution to the success of SSAIB, particularly with regard to addressing the needs of local and regional installers of security systems.”