A FORMER Lord Mayor of Oxford who died days after receiving a lifetime honour for her work this week has been described as 'the embodiment of public service'.

Jean Fooks was made one of the city’s first ever council aldermen on Monday in recognition of her 26 years as a councillor.

After serving as Lord Mayor for 2017/ 18, she finally retired from politics in May and left the city to live closer to relatives in Dulverton, Somerset.

Having enjoyed just seven months of retirement, she passed away on Wednesday this week.

Mrs Fooks’ daughter, Carolyn Naylor, said: “It is a tragedy that she had lots of plans and things she was going to get involved with – but she had done a lot of work already. She designed and installed a new garden. She got on with that very quickly.”

She added: “I know she was deeply touched by the best wishes she got from Oxford and Oxfordshire.

“She took a lot of comfort from the fact that people appreciated what she had done and that people were so nice to her."

Susan Brown, the current city council’s leader, said Mrs Fooks had left ‘an indelible mark' on the city and would be missed.

Mrs Fooks was first elected a city councillor in 1992 and served as the Liberal Democrats’ group leader from 2012 until 2016. She first represented North ward and then Summertown following boundary changes.

Tenacious, she resisted calls to change controversial plans on fortnightly wheelie bin collections introduced when she was the city council’s executive member for a cleaner city in 2007.

She was seeking to increase recycling rates – which rose – and was compared by the Oxford Mail to Margaret Thatcher when she said she was ‘not for turning’.

Mrs Fooks was also elected a Lib Dem county councillor in 2001 and served in that position until 2017, representing Cherwell, Summertown and Wolvercote divisions in that time.

Andrew Gant, the city council’s current Lib Dem group leader, said: “I learnt so much from Jean.

"Her capacity for hard work, clear sense of principle, depth of knowledge and above all her care and compassion for people were simply inspiring.

“She brought real personal bravery to her work, both in the way personal circumstances inspired her desire to help other people, and in standing up to criticism when she knew she was right (which she usually was).

“When she became Lord Mayor, she said ‘it has been wonderful over the years to be able to do my small part… Sometimes you can help by just knowing the right person to talk to. There are so many lovely people in Cutteslowe. I tend to see them every year when I go door-knocking and remember things we’ve been through together – and this year I realised how long I have known some of them'.

"That remains her legacy."

Another former Lib Dem councillor colleague Tony Brett said on Twitter that Mrs Fooks had been his ‘absolute favourite bloody difficult woman'.

In one showdown she had with her own party in 2001, she lost her job as the chairwoman of the city council’s highways committee over her opposition to increasing park and ride fees from 50p to £1. At the time, the Oxford Mail said pressure on her had ‘bordered on the intolerable’.

As a councillor she championed Cutteslowe, which she said was overlooked, despite being one of Oxford’s most deprived areas.

Former Lib Dem colleague Graham Jones said: “Jean was the embodiment of public service. Personal and party interests came second to what was best for the people she represented.

“She could be fierce in her pursuit of what she judged correct, but she was kind, courteous, and considerate to the core.”

Born in Reading in 1939, she grew up in the town and Bath, before studying physics at Somerville College, Oxford, from 1958.

She kept a close association with the college and it still hosts an annual lecture in memory of her daughter Monica, who died in 1994.

Mrs Fooks worked at the Radio Research Station, near Slough, and later the European Space Data Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

She also taught maths and physics, moving to Oxfordshire in 1982 to take up a job in data analysis for the NHS. She retired in 1997 to work in politics full-time.

It is a mark of cross-party respect for Mrs Fooks that she was chosen to become an honorary alderman of the city council.

Her former Lib Dem colleague Stephen Brown was at Oxford Town Hall on Monday to collect the award on her behalf.

Council leader Susan Brown added: “Jean was a determined and hardworking councillor with a very strong sense of public duty.

“She had a strong and forthright character and was regarded with great respect by all who knew her. Even though she had recently moved to be near her family, Jean was very much part of Oxford.

"She left an indelible mark on our city and will be missed.”