Like everyone else, I hardly know where to start to write this and still can’t believe that I even need to do it.  I’ve had the privilege of working closely with Sarah since I joined LSL in 2018 to lead the Compliance Team and it has been a real pleasure. Sarah was knowledgeable, practical, full of common sense and her no-nonsense approach to Compliance was appreciated by everyone across the business.  She was always hard-working, going the extra mile and taking on responsibility to see a task or project through but always in a positive and easy-going way.  Sarah’s skills made her an ideal candidate for promotion to role of Compliance & Assurance Manager in 2019, since when she has built a great team. Having to tell Sarah’s team about her passing was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do but they have pulled together and supported each other through this tough time and I know Sarah would be very proud of them.

I really appreciate the support Sarah always gave me as COLP and I always knew that she was a safe pair of hands for any piece of work. She was a great asset to the business and her loss is going to be felt for a long time to come.  Sarah didn’t take praise easily, though, and would let it slide right off, like Teflon, and she may have been the only person in the business who didn’t see just how good she was at her job.

Sarah was one of life’s genuinely kind and decent people and I am glad to have known her, even if it was for too short a time. She was a joy to know and any meeting with her involved lots of laughter as her sense of humour, witty comments and wry observations would crack me up. Early in the Covid lockdown, Sarah told me that she had the “first-world problem” of not being able to find M&S’s lavender-scented toilet roll so I promised that when I went to my local M&S to do my mum’s shopping, I would look for it. So a few days later, I found myself on a mercy mission to deliver 2 precious packs of said loo roll to Sarah – crisis averted! 

I still can’t believe that she has gone and I’m going to miss her dreadfully, both as a colleague and as a friend.

Hope to see you again, Sarah, some sunny day in the great beyond!

Elaine xx

LSL/Overdales COLP