Not many FDs can claim that their predecessor was Henry VIII.

But Sally O’Neill, the FD of the Historic Royal Palaces, can. Sitting in her office by the Thames in the lavish surroundings of Hampton Court, she can say that, admittedly some centuries before her arrival and not entirely in the same role, the Tudor king cast a watchful eye over the same surroundings.

It’s not a bad place to work: gardens to left and right; paintings from the Royal Collection on the wall; in a building partly designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

O’Neill says her job certainly has its compensations: the audit committee meeting, for instance, is held at Buckingham Palace (Sir Alan Reid, the Queen’s FD, is the chair). ‘We never have any trouble getting the auditors along,’ O’Neill says.

It’s the latest instalment of a career in arts administration that has taken in the National Theatre, Channel 4 and Granada. There has been no lack of colour in the jobs she has taken on.

‘I have never had a gameplan. It has all been serendipity,’ she says.

O’Neill left Cambridge with a Natural Sciences degree in the early 1980s, having set her heart on a career in arts administration.

While at university she acted in student productions, playing Lucy in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe which was staged at the Edinburgh Festival. She plays piano to grade eight, as well as the saxophone.

To achieve her dream of working in the arts she was advised to take a professional qualifi-cation as she would enter the business at a higher level ­ and so it has proved.

The Historic Royal Palaces is, as an organisation at least, not hugely well-known. An independent charity, HRP runs Hampton Court, the Tower of London, Kew Palace, Kensington Palace and Banqueting House.

The strategy for the charity going forward involves nothing too flash: it hopes to grow its income steadily and develop the way it delivers its core objectives. ‘We can’t grow by acquisition,’ O’Neill jokes.

Events

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is pleased with its progress apparently, and with the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession to the throne next year and the associated festivities, there is a lot to look forward to.

There is one niggle though. O’Neill’s office, in a wing at the front of the palace just by the main gate, is too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. As she says: ‘You can’t just double glaze everywhere’.

The greatest risk that the charity is exposed to is the vagaries of tourism. After the 7 July bombings, tourism dropped off, which coming in the middle of the summer, was extremely damaging, O’Neill says, as some 80% of those who visit the Tower of London are tourists.

‘A lot of that business came back ­ but the Americans never really came back in the same numbers after 9/11,’ she says.

They are now deterred by a weak dollar, and the currency fluctuations are seeing further changes in HRP’s custom.

But, as O’Neill points out: ‘We get different people: French, Spanish, Australian.’

That raises different questions: ‘Do they expect different levels of hygiene? Do we need different guidebooks?’

Another question, of course, is whether the new tourists can ever really replace the Americans’ fascination with the English royals?

‘Clearly the Americans are besotted with it. What we are seeing are Russians really interested in the iconic religious and royal symbolism, and the Japanese too.

‘The Chinese, too, haven’t had that in their recent history, and we hope they will be coming in bigger numbers,’ she explains.

Challenges

One person who clearly is still enamoured of the surroundings is O’Neill.

After four years in any one job, she always gets ‘itchy feet,’ but having been at HRP since 2004, she says that she hasn’t dusted her CV off for a while.

There is a cyclical nature to many finance jobs, doing the same annual report year after year. So, ‘unless the organisation is incredibly dynamic and changing’ it can get dull, she thinks, so it’s a tribute to her current role that she is still around.

It hasn’t all been smooth running though. ‘[The challenge] in the first six months was the balance between managing up, down and sideways; getting to grips with charity legislation, gaining the confidence of directors and trustees and so on: the balance of where I spent my time.’

Finance ladder

O’Neill started her career at Spicer & Pegler in Cambridge, auditing SMEs in the local area. However, ‘auditing was never going to be for me,’ she explains.

She took an Arts Council bursary offering experience for qualified accountants in arts organisations, before taking a job as a finance officer for the British Film Institute.

While working as an auditor meant working with a group of like-minded people of the same age, her first jobs within finance departments, meant managing people from various backgrounds.

She worked for the British Film Institute for two years, then the National Theatre for six years as financial controller. After a short spell at Granada Media Group in the mid-1990s, bizarrely O’Neill chose to be chief accountant at shopping channel QVC.

‘I am always disabusing my middle-class friends of their preconceptions of QVC. It was a wonderful experience. It’s incredibly well-run and incredibly profitable ­ it treats its staff very well, knows its customers and sells fantastic products.’

Still, QVC, such a symbol of American capitalism, is a far cry from working to preserve the former homes of Henry VIII and Diana , Princess of Wales (Kensington Palace)?

While admitting it was different from her ‘artsy-fartsy roles’, she found the experience refreshing.
After working on a big deal that didn’t go through at QVC, going back to the day job wasn’t an option, so it was time for a change.

At Channel 4 she worked for head of education Heather Rabbatts, the Jamaican-born lawyer and businesswoman who turned round Lambeth Council and now runs Millwall football club.

‘I’ve been very lucky in having some great bosses. Heather was a great leader, not a detail person, but very strategic, a fantastic presenter. She was also larger than life.’

However, having taken a direction ­ sales and marketing ­ she wasn’t comfortable with, after just two and a half years she decided to move on. This time to HRP.

Charitable crossroads

The job leaves her well-placed: ‘The interesting thing is it places me at a crossroads. I have a lot to do with government, and [experience] too of a big charity. It’s also a big visitor attraction.’

Any similar roles could appeal, as she adds that she is ‘still quite new at being an FD’.

To that end, she does not necessarily see herself taking a more central chief executive role. ‘That happens a lot in commercial companies, but the charitable world is very different.’

Leaders tend to emerge from smaller organisations rather than from the finance function.

For the time being, there’s the Henry VIII festivities to look forward to. The challenge of one exhibition at Hampton Court is to present Henry the young man, the talented sportsman ­ rather than the popular image as overweight ­ to displace the story of Henry and his six wives and the upheavals of the Reformation.

The organisation is ‘excited’ about the prospects for next year, she says. Not many FDs, looking at the calendar for the year ahead, can look forward to a similar challenge.

Palace finances

The Historic Royal Palaces receives no funding from the government. Let loose from government grants in 1998, the company earns its £50m of income from tic ket prices - three million people visit the palaces every year - its retail products, catering, sponsorship and events.

‘We have a contract with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. We don’t own the five palaces, we just have a licence to run them. We have two key charitable objectives: to preserve and conserve the fabric of the buildings, and to educate the public about them and their history,’ O’Neill says.

The HRP has 600 staff on the payroll, who make up most of its costs, including a troop of 40 gardeners to look after the extensive gardens at Hampton Court.

The National Trust, by contrast, owns the properties it runs, and is also a much larger concern than HRP.

One thing HRP wants to do is to increase people’s awareness of what it is. ‘We want people to know who we are, so they think if they have had a good experience at one of our locations, they might come to another,’ says O’Neill.

That goes for donors as much as for visitors. Man Group plc charitable trust has just donated a substantial sum for a project at the Tower of London - and the corporate dollar is clearly important to the palaces’ upkeep.