FOR 25 years Alison McLean has been helping to strengthen the voice of people living in the countryside.

She has earned the title “champion of rural communities” and has been rewarded with an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List.

She calls Herefordshire her adopted county but her work has taken her further afield on rural problems at local, regional, national and international levels.

In her private life, she is better known as Alison While, lives at Wellington, has three children and is married to Adrian While, consultant eye surgeon at the County Hospital.

Ms McLean came to the county 25 years ago when her husband took up a post at the former Victoria Eye Hospital in Hereford.

She had been doing community work in London’s Islington but quickly switched to countryside affairs in Herefordshire, determined to see that rural life remained strong and vibrant.

“It has always been a fight to get rural voices heard but I believe it is more successful now,” she said.

Over the years she has been involved in many rural programmes, including the Leominster Marches Partnership, and has been economic resources and policy manager for Herefordshire Council, commissioning manager for Herefordshire Partnership, director of the rural regeneration zone for Shropshire, Commissioner for Rural Communities, member of the board of the Countryside Agency, vice chairman of West Midlands Rural Affairs Forum and director of the Regional Regeneration Zone, based in Ludlow, under the auspices of Advantage West Midlands.