Sir Simon Day
Popular Devon councillor, businessman and farmer who also stood three times for Parliament
SIR SIMON DAY, who has died aged 88, was a highly influential figure in the West of England as, among many other things, Conservative leader of Devon County Council; he also headed the West Country Television consortium which in 1980 bid to replace Westward TV, which had been crippled by boardroom infighting.
For Day – in the words of the Telegraph’s Sean Day Lewis, “a friendly Devon landowner, politician and grandee” – winning the ITV franchise was unfinished family business; his father’s consortium had lost to Peter Cadbury when Westward was chosen as the region’s first contractor in 1961. Yet he insisted that his own rivalry with “the Cad” had been much exaggerated.
The ousting of the volcanic Cadbury by his own board left Westward vulnerable as its franchise came up for renewal. Day formed WCT, one of two rival bidders, but while it was narrowly the bookies’ favourite it lost out to TSW, which would hold the franchise until 1992.
On the political stage, Day – a livestock farmer at Ivybridge in south Devon – was a county councillor for 49 years, led the council in the early 1990s and chaired it in 2001-02, as well as chairing bodies ranging from the Devon & Cornwall Police Authority to the Association of Sea Fisheries Committees for England and Wales; he also stood three times for Parliament.
Day made a rare appearance in the national headlines in 2000, when he sued the London art dealers Agnews after a painting his father had bought for £5,700 in the 1960s as a Constable, and which they had valued in 1998 at £660,000, turned out to be a copy.
The action concerned a series of free valuations for insurance purposes carried out on the painting – Hampstead Heath: Branch Hill Pond – between 1975 and the late 1990s. Day became suspicious in 1999 when he discovered it was not in a recently published catalogue raisonné of Constable’s work. He was later told it was a copy of an engraving in the Victoria & Albert Museum, and worth a few hundred pounds.
The case was settled days before it was due to come to court. Day withdrew any allegation that Agnews or its former chairman, Evelyn Joll, had behaved improperly, the firm paid him “some compensation”, and each side met their own costs.
Simon James Day was born on January 22 1935, the son of John Day and the former Kathleen Hebditch. From South Devon Technical College he did his National Service in the Royal Navy from 1954 to 1956, then read history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, before farming in his own right.
He was first elected to the county council in 1964, representing Modbury and later Salcombe, and served until 2013, when he was elected an honorary alderman.
Early on, Day harboured national political ambitions. He fought Carmarthen at the 1966 general election, coming fourth and last with 5,338 votes as Lady Megan Lloyd George held the seat for Labour. Following her death soon after, his vote halved in the by-election that returned Gwynfor Evans as Plaid Cymru’s first MP.
He looked to have a better chance in 1970, taking on the Liberal John Pardoe at highly marginal North Cornwall, but on the night Pardoe hung on by 630 votes.
Day became Conservative whip on the county council in 1981, deputy leader of the council in 1989 and its leader in 1991, chairing the key committees.
In 1989, when the Tories’ first steps after regaining the council from the Liberal/sdp Alliance were to reintroduce first-class rail travel for official business and waitress service in the members’ restaurant, it was left to Day to defend the changes. He said: “It is important if one is going to meet a Secretary of State to travel and discuss matters with chief officers about the meeting ahead. First class is more suitable for this purpose.”
After the Conservatives lost control again in 1993, Day continued as opposition leader for a further six years, before his year chairing the council. He was Conservative leader on the Association of County Councils, also chairing its police committee, and chaired his own police authority from 1991 to 1993.
Day’s experience in this post led him to write to The Spectator in 2015, when the
“Plebgate” affair broke, concerning the conduct of the police guarding Downing Street. Day wrote: “Charles Moore refers to ‘fat unshaven policemen’ at the gates. I believe that one in five serving officers in the national force is not fit to carry out his duties, and gets pushed into jobs such as protecting Downing Street. The Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-howe, should ensure that fit and intelligent officers guard No 10.”
Day also chaired the Devon and Cornwall Development Bureau, was vice-chairman of the National Parks Committee for England and Wales, and from 2006 to 2013 vicechairman of the UK delegation to the EU’S Committee of Regions. He also chaired the Conservative Party’s National Local Government Advisory Committee, and in 2008-09 the South West Regional Assembly.
He had strong business interests in the region, chairing West of England Newspapers from 1981 to 1986 and being a director of Plymouth Sound Radio and Exeter International Airport.
He was at various times president of the South Devon Herd Book Society and the Devon County Show, chaired the governors of Bicton College of Agriculture, and was a member of the court of Exeter University. He was High Sheriff of Devon for 19992000, as well as a hereditary Freeman of the City of Norwich. He was knighted in 1997.
Away from his political and business duties, Day had a gift for friendship and was never happier than when fishing with his contemporary from Cambridge days, the former defence secretary Sir John Nott, and the Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. They regularly fished the rivers of their native West Country, and the Naver and the Tweed in Scotland.
Day was also a keen sailor, and with his fellow Devon landowner Lord Clinton he bought and shared for many years a Fairey Swordsman motorboat, Apollyon, often to be found on the Devon waterways.
He could also take a ribbing, which won him warm respect. Ted Hughes introduced him to Seamus Heaney and, although they were poles apart in politics and background, a firm friendship arose from this. Other close friends included Michael (Lord) Heseltine, who first met Day in 1965 after being selected as the Conservative candidate for Tavistock.
“He was always amiable, friendly and courteous and very good on subjects if they interested him,” Lord Heseltine recalled. “From that time I shot with him once a year and he was a true friend of the West Country and its countryside.”
Simon Day married, in 1959, Hilary Gomm; she died in 2023. Their two sons survive him; a third son predeceased him.