John Simmonds, public servant

My colleague John Simmonds, KCC Cabinet Member for Finance 2009-18 and Deputy Leader of the Council 2013-17, died on Sunday. He was 82.

It was quite a long life - though 82 is not exceptional these days - and a very good one, and in that sense we cannot mourn too much. But the sense of loss is still very big.

John was elected to KCC in 2001 after a successful banking career. He was community-minded and a public servant before he was a Councillor, deeply involved in the life of Whitstable (in which he had lived since 1964), chairing the Whitstable Castle Trust and serving on the council of the University of Kent.

In his long tenure of the Finance portfolio, he had to oversee huge savings, amounting to over £600 million, as local government was put in the front line of central government's austerity drive. He cared passionately about the services that the Council commissions and provides - he served two years in the post that I have held subsequently, of Cabinet Member for Education, and brought huge commitment to it - but he also knew that the books had to balance. In these toughest of times, he delivered nine consecutive balanced budgets.

In this, the Council benefited from his financial acumen, as it did when, working with some exceptionally able officers, he oversaw the full recovery of KCC's balances with Icelandic banks. But what also marked him out was the sensitivity with which he oversaw this difficult process, and slowly and steadily built consensus behind the savings. He was never a Treasury hatchet man. In this, he formed a great partnership with Andy Wood, who left as KCC's Director of Finance a couple of months ago. One of Andy's great sadnesses at his farewell to the Council was that John was by then too ill to attend.

John and I sat next to each other in Monday morning Cabinet meetings for many years. He was delightful company, thoughtful and well-informed, and with a lively and sometimes risqué sense of humour. He was, until his final illness, inspirationally vigorous in his late seventies and into his eighties. He was a family man and a public servant, a moderate and internationalist Conservative - as his Conservative Association chairman put it, "he was one of the good guys." This is farewell to a colleague and a friend.