LORD Bruce-Lockhart, born in Wakefield and educated at Sedbergh School and the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, wielded considerable political influence as chairman of the Local Government Association, which represents the interests of town halls.

He relinquished some of this control in August last year when he was appointed chairman of English Heritage. Seven weeks later he underwent surgery for cancer and has died aged 66.

Sandy, as he was known to friends and colleagues, was the grandson, on his mother's side, of Campbell Richard Hone, Bishop of Wakefield from 1938 to 1945. His father, John, was a director of MI6.

In 1963 he went to manage a farm in Southern Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – and following Ian Smith's unilateral declaration of independence went to work in Australia. He returned to England in 1968 to take up 300 acres of apple and pear orchards near Headcorn, Kent, where he spent the rest of his life.

He joined the Conservative Party in 1984 and in 1989 was elected to Kent County Council, where he was a vigorous opponent of a proposed route – later abandoned – for the Channel Tunnel high-speed rail link.

He was the leader of the council from 1997 and from 2004 was chairman of the LGA. As such, his was an influential voice in the Conservative Party – successive leaders seeking his advice – and his forcibly-expressed concerns about the effect on local services of the great influx of asylum seekers at the Kent ports resonated far beyond the county's borders.

He was also an outspoken critic of Labour's plans for a massive increase in housing in the South East.

A man of strong, forthright views, he could be controversial, such as when Kent imposed its own version of Section 28 to curb the propagation of homosexuality in schools after the national legislation had been repealed.

In 1966 he married Tess Pressland and they had two sons and a daughter.