I’m thrilled to see that Kathy Gore has been awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List. Now she becomes a national treasure as well as a local one. I’ve known Kathy for many years, following her progress as a committee member of the Friends of East Sussex Hospices in the early 1990s, consolidating it into a charity in 1995, and helping it grow from a clutch of buildings in Hove into the eight Martletts Hospices and four Hospice Care Providers we know today.

Kathy and her team have raised more than £1.3 million in 19 years. They began with a Christmas fair and launched musical concerts, hymnathons at Chichester and operatic picnics culminating in a recital at Glyndebourne where The Sixteen performed a gala concert before a packed house. They raised a fortune. She was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of East Sussex in 2006 and became High Sheriff in 2011/12. She is patron of the Whitehawk Inn in one of the most deprived areas of Brighton.

She works with the Sussex Community Foundation which raises funds for smaller local charities.

Kathy manages a busy family life with Jack, children, grandchildren and a new great-grandchild and even finds time to run with me over the Downs. What’s more – she goes longer and faster. Lucky Jack, lucky Sussex, lucky me.

Louise Schweitzer, Hove