North Oxfordshire MP Victoria Prentis's life is a hive of activity

Following the General Election MP Victoria Prentis has resumed her position at the helm of all things politics across the Banbury constituency.

But reporter Naomi Herring looks at where it all began and what the mother-of-two gets up to outside her Conservative party role.

It started with a seven-year-old's public plea written down in a letter to save the Horton General Hospital and read out in front of classmates.

But little did that youngster know that almost 40 years later the young Victoria Prentis would be making the same plea but as Banbury MP.

For Mrs Prentis this is one of her oldest memories of taking a political stance and says it is troubling to think she has come full circle to face fighting that battle again.

She said: “I remember making a little speech in my form at school when I was seven-years-old because my little sister was born in the Horton general Hospital that year, so I knew it was important.”

The 46-year-old puts the early interest in politics down to her very community-involved family and the various roles they played in local campaigns and politics.

Mrs Prentis said: “My dad [Lord Tim Boswell, former MP for Daventry] didn't become a politician until I was 16-years-old but the whole family was very much into community service and it was very common for our house to be a sort of public place with lots of meetings etc.”

As a child Mrs Prentis grew up in Aynho near Banbury, and studied both the University of London and University of Cambridge where she studied both English literature and law.

It was during her time as a student at Cambridge where she met husband Sebastian.

Mrs Prentis went on to qualify as a barrister in 1995, a role in which she held at an independent firm for a couple of years before becoming a civil servant in 1997.

She said: “I was a civil servant for 17 years and really enjoyed it, eventually working my way to the role of head of the justice and security department.

“It was important work and I felt I was useful, it was great work in a role I really loved.”

But Mrs Prentis said her ever-growing work with charities encouraged her to take up the role as close family friend Tony Baldry’s successor as Banbury MP.

So in 2015 Mrs Prentis stepped into the big shoes that Sir Tony had held for 32 years and this year held her seat with more than 33,000 votes.

She said: “It has been great taking on the role as MP and a great privilege to represent my home area, a down side has been the threat to the Horton which is really overshadowed everything.

"It was not a threat we had imagined for a few more years after we fought and won the last big campaign in 2008.

“I definitely see it as my role to fight for this after some of the awful things that have happened in my life, like my son dying, it has made me a great person to sift through these documents and stand up against it.

"I feel very responsible to take on that role and all the things I have done in my life means I am all over it like a rash and am the CCG’s worst nightmare really."

Mrs Prentis spoke out about the tragic loss of her son in the House of Commons in October telling of how she suffered two miscarriages before her third pregnancy, during which she developed life-threatening conditions preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome and her son died shortly after birth.

She went on two have two daughters now and is now chairman of the Benefactor’s Board of the Oxford Children’s Hospital Trust helping to support all three hospital sites.

She added: “Other big topics [on the agenda] at the moment are obviously growth which is a big deal locally with 22,000 new homes coming.

"That is something we need to manage in a joined up way as we have to have the means and the infrastructure to match.

"For example London Road crossing in Bicester is a big issue and for Bicester generally the roads. It is infrastructure such as hospitals and schools etc."

But when the mum-of-two isn’t out door knocking in her constituency and representing the region in parliament she is enjoying time with her family.

Even on election day Mrs Prentis was out rushing her daughter to her GCSE maths exam before heading down to the count overnight.

Mrs Prentis also confessed of her love of animals and divulged the profuse number of pets her family have including dogs, sheep and most recently bees.

She added: “There would be too many to count, my dads a farmer so we have lots of pets including the dogs and sheep, and the we have just started bee keeping so the bees are the newest addition.

“They came about as a result of my constituents actually, I had read a lot of letters about bees and they are now breeding so we hopefully will have a lot of baby bees soon too.”