My friend Barrie Taylor, who has died aged 78, was a big man with a big personality – a community and health service champion and a Labour party councillor for the London borough of Westminster.
In 1974 he became the first and last secretary of the South West Herts community health council, holding the job for 30 years until it was abolished. He loved helping people to engage with the NHS, via everything from complaints systems to statutory consultations, and believed that community health councils were an essential democratising feature of the NHS.
