My friend Sue Jones, who has died of cancer aged 67, did enormous good for the people of Harlow in Essex as a welfare rights adviser. Although she was not from Harlow originally, over a period of 40 years she came to imbue the town’s spirit, and became a champion for it.
Sue arrived there in the mid-1980s to work as a benefits and employment adviser in the Welfare Rights and Advice Service, which at the time was run by the local council. She eventually rose to be the service’s chief executive when it floated away from local authority control.
I worked with Sue when I became a local councillor and then when I was elected as Harlow’s MP. In both roles I saw at first-hand her immense skills and dogged advocacy for people in need. She was an expert at marshalling facts and evidence, had a consummate knowledge of legislation, and was like a dog with a bone when it came to fighting for her clients, her staff, or against injustice of any sort.
Sue was born in Liverpool, to Dorothy (nee Haisley), a nursing assistant, and Alec Jones, a shopkeeper. She went to Deyes high school in Liverpool, after which she worked as a clerk at Liverpool city council, the North West Water Authority and the Department of Health and Social Security in the late 70s while studying for A-levels at night school.
From 1980 to 1983 she did a degree in economic social history at Hull University as a mature student, before becoming a benefits and employment rights adviser with Harlow council.
In later years, when cuts began to hit hard, Sue lobbied for more money and mounted legal challenges, until, in 2013, she reconstituted the service as a charitable body, the Harlow and West Essex Law Centre (also known as the Harlow Advice Centre) and became its chief executive. This opened the way for successful bids for other sources of funding that secured its future.
Although work was Sue’s main interest, she looked forward to her occasional trips to Australia, the US and Cornwall, and loved visiting family members. She was a caring and talented community champion who made a big difference to many people’s lives in Harlow.
She met Frank O’Brien, an audio-visual technician, shortly after she had moved to Harlow, and they were partners for many years before marrying in 2010. Frank died in 2017 and she is survived by his children and grandchildren from a previous marriage.
