COLLEAGUES, clients and friends have been paying tribute to a well-known Harrogate accountant who has died suddenly.

A funeral service was held at St John’s Church, Bilton, Harrogate, on Wednesday for former champion runner Simon Giles Pease, 43, a partner at DSC in Princes Square, who died of heart failure on February 20.

More than 200 colleagues, clients, friends and fellow professionals attended the funeral for Simon who moved from Harrogate to Ripon last year. He leaves a widow, Alex, and three children.

Born in Leeds, Simon was a former English Schools 1,500-metre champion who won a middle-distance running athletics scholarship in the mid 1980s to study for an accountancy degree at Rice University, Texas. He continued to run regularly for pleasure for the rest of his life.

He returned to the UK in 1990 and worked at Arthur Andersen, Leeds, where he met his future wife, who was also an accountant, followed by spells at Leeds-based Binder Hamlyn and Riley & Co, Halifax, before moving to DSC, then known as David Smith Crosswaite, in 1999. Widely respected for his acute business insights, calm and charming manner, cutting-edge tax schemes and helping a wide range of clients with their wealth maximisation and retention, Simon became a partner in 2001.

Together with DSC senior partner, John Campbell, he then helped drive the practice’s growth in the local business community, taking it into the Added Value Network (AVN), and started a series of hugely-successful Business Breakfast Seminars at The White Hart hotel, Cold Bath Road, Harrogate.

In an address at the funeral, paying tribute to his “dear friend and business partner”, John Campbell read out many tributes from clients and said: “Simon was a truly wonderful character and the best possible partner and it is immensely difficult for all of us to contemplate the loss of somebody of his stature whom we all cared about so much.

“He was a passionate believer in the development of our team at DSC and particularly in their empowerment which is something we have worked on over the last few years to everyone’s benefit. The team at DSC held Simon in very high regard and with huge respect for his ability in all areas.

“Simon was only 43, and it is so tragic that he has been taken from us at such an early age. I am sure that he had not yet reached his full potential and, given time, would have achieved much more in the firm and in his professional and family life.

“We have lost a truly wonderful man and our thoughts are very much with his family on this sad occasion.”