My grandfather, John Barratt, who has died aged 89, was a local government leader who served as chief executive of Cambridgeshire county council. When he took on that newly created role in 1973, he was the youngest council chief executive in Britain at 40. He served until 1986, including a secondment to Zimbabwe in 1980 to oversee local elections following the end of white minority rule in what was then Rhodesia.
After his retirement from the council, he led numerous public inquiries, notably into the Bradford riots of 1995 and the Barratt inquiry of 1996, which found that the London borough of Westminster failed to exercise proper standards of the management of asbestos in some of its tower blocks.
He also continued to work internationally on establishing local government structures, including in Uganda, Poland and Lesotho. Even after he retired altogether, John’s abiding interest in local government led him to do a PhD in the subject at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.
John was born in Radcliffe, Lancashire, to Arthur, a plumber who spent three years fighting in north Africa and Italy during the second world war, and Gladys (nee Kirkman), a housewife.
After attending Bury grammar school and reading law at Manchester University, he met Hilary Sykes while they were both working at a Christian youth camp, and they married in 1958. He first worked as a prosecutor in Swansea and then Huddersfield, before serving as deputy town clerk in Bradford. His work there included laying the groundwork for establishment of the Bradford metropolitan district council and he was also a lay preacher in local Methodist churches.
In 1973 the family moved to Cambridge. Then, after his retirement in 2000, he and Hilary settled in the beautiful village of King’s Cliffe in Northamptonshire, where he spent his final years travelling, gardening and playing the organ in the village church.
John was endlessly interested in the lives of those he met, and he developed deep friendships. In his last sermon, given in 2022, he argued that “what Jesus called the kingdom of heaven in secular language might be called a strong unselfish belief that choosing what is right is always better than doing what is wrong”.
John remained steadfast in his values and his generosity to others, even after the death of his daughter Ann, in 2018. He believed that mutual understanding and the building of strong, diverse communities were the tenets of moral and spiritual fulfilment.
His kindness extended to becoming a foster parent in the 1960s to Wendy and Marianna, who remained important members of our family; Wendy cared for John during his final months.
He is survived by Hilary, their children, David, Martyn and Susan, 12 grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and a great-great-grandchild, and his sister, Kathleen.
