FAMILY and friends are mourning a man who was a leading international consulting engineer and one half of the first civil partnership in Basingstoke.

Michael Lansley-Neale OBE, BSc(Eng), DIC, FCGI, WhSch, FREng, FIMechE, FIDGTE, FRSA, lived at Herriard for the past 53 years and was an important figure in the establishment of gliding at Lasham.

Born in 1926, he went on to become an engineering apprentice with Rolls-Royce Ltd in Derby. He was a member of the British team who won the World Gliding Champion-ships in Madrid in 1955.

Mr Lansley-Neale was also a founder member of Lasham Gliding Society, now the largest in the world. He helped to relocate the club to Lasham in 1951 from Redhill.

He founded Michael Neale and Associates in 1962, which 30 years later became Neale Consulting Engineers Ltd (NCE) based at Herriard, Farnham and Dogmersfield. He was a Whitworth scholar and President of the Whitworth Society in 1977.

Mr Lansley-Neale gave expert evidence to parliamentary committees and crash inquiries and worked on problems with components for the original Mini, London Underground lifts and escalators, power station failures, steelworks and other major plant failures.

He was also the author of several highly-regarded publications and was the subject of a 30-minute BBC documentary in 1977 called ‘The Engineers’ where an episode was filmed largely in Herriard.

Mr Lansley-Neale was awarded the OBE in 1984 for services to the engineering profession and was President of the Association of Consulting Scientists (ACS) at the time of his death.

He helped improve onshore environmental noise standards for oil and gas drilling and production through involvement in a local environmental campaign at Humbly Grove near his home in Hampshire.

He entered a civil partnership with Ian Lansley, on December 21, 2005 at Goldings in Basingstoke on the first day civil partnerships were legal. He then altered his name to Michael Lansley-Neale.

The couple organised major local fundraising events, raising more than £10,000 including in excess of £3,000 for St Michael’s Hospice in Basingstoke.

Mr Lansley-Neale fought a long-term battle with terminal multiple myeloma cancer, contracting the disease in 2003 and surviving 13 chemo regimes, kidney failure, heart failure, chemo poisoning and pneumonia. Eventually the combination of the cancer, pneumonia and a further kidney failure proved too much. He died at the cottage, as he wanted to, with Ian by his side on August 4. The couple had been toge-ther for 35 years.

A thanksgiving service and celebration of 85-year-old Mr Lansley-Neale’s life was held at St Mary’s Church, Herriard.