THIRTY-FOUR years in local politics will come to an end for one councillor when she stands down in nine weeks' time.
Angela Fraser has served on the county and borough councils, and been both borough mayor and chairman of the county council.
She sums up her years as "a great privilege", but laments the payment culture which has emerged over that time.
"I consider myself very privileged to have served the area in which I live for such a long time, and hopefully I have done a pretty good job," said Mrs Fraser.
"It is very different to how it was. When I first started you didn't get an allowance. You got your expenses, but many people didn't take any expenses at all in those days. The councillors did their job for no other reason than to serve the people, and not for anything they may receive.
"A £5,000 allowance for a borough councillor – what do they do? A couple of evenings a week? And £11,000 for a county councillor is a great deal of money for what is basically part-time work.
"It has changed the attitude of people both inside the councils and outside – people think councillors are paid. I am not saying everybody doesn't do a good job. You always have varied performances and people do things for different reasons."
Mrs Fraser, from Chipstead, was first elected to the borough council to represent Chipstead, Hooley and Woodmansterne in 1979, and to the county council two years later, latterly representing the division of Banstead East. She was borough mayor in 1988, the year after the death of her husband Ian, a former MP, and county chairman in 2007.
Mrs Fraser has not always remained in line with her Conservative colleagues. She was an outspoken critic of a blanket on-street parking charging policy for town centres in 2011, which was eventually dropped.
She credits leading the fight to stop county hall moving from Kingston to Woking as among her achievements, and says the lost battle to save Chipstead First School from closure had come back to bite the council in the current school places crisis.
Mrs Fraser, a mother-of-two and grandmother-of-three, has served as governor at a string of schools. Following her retirement from local politics she plans to continue working with the Surrey Historic Buildings Trust and the Reigate Priory Museum Society, and to devote more time to the Queen Elizabeth's Foundation in Banstead, and her two pet dogs.
All county council seats are up for election on May 2.
