Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, Baron Bruce-Lockhart

Who was Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, Baron Bruce-Lockhart?

Alexander John Bruce-Lockhart, Baron Bruce-Lockhart, OBE, commonly known as Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, was a British Conservative politician and a senior figure in English local government. He was the leader of Kent County Council and then Chairman of the Local Government Association. He was succeeded by Simon Milton, ex-Leader of Westminster Council.

Bruce-Lockhart was born into a Scottish family with close ties to the diplomatic service. His father, John Bruce Lockhart, was deputy director of MI6 and a university administrator. He was educated at the Dragon School, Sedbergh, and the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, and left the United Kingdom to work in the then Rhodesia, managing a large farm for a South African owner. After a period in Australia, he returned to live in Kent in 1968, where he had a dairy farm, then a 300-acre fruit farm, in Headcorn.

Bruce-Lockhart became a county councillor for Maidstone Rural East in 1989 almost by accident. At the time he was chairman of a rail committee in the Weald of Kent preservation society, which had been protesting about what he then regarded as the destructive route of the Channel tunnel rail link.