| Alexander Serge Lourie | |
| Birth Date: | 22 February 1946 |
| Birth Place: | London, England |
| Spouse: | Julia |
Alexander Serge Lourie CF (born 22 February 1946) is a former Leader of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, where he was a local government councillor from 1982 to 2010.[1] He was Chairman of the United Kingdom Housing Trust,[2] Kingston Hospital NHS Trust[3] and Sanctuary Housing Association.[4] He has also been the General Secretary of Help the Aged[5] and a board member of the London Pensions Fund Authority[6] [7] and the Notting Hill Housing Trust.
Lourie was born on 22 February 1946. He is of Russian extraction and is the great-grandson of Lev Philippovitch Wolkenstein. His mother was Anna Rootchenko.[8] He was educated at St Paul's School, London[9] and Worcester College, Oxford[10] (1965–68), graduating from the University of Oxford with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
Lourie qualified as a chartered accountant with Cooper Brothers in 1971 (now PricewaterhouseCoopers).[11] He was a Labour Party member of Westminster City Council (1971–74)[12] and the Greater London Council member for Hornchurch (1973–77)[13] where he was chair of scrutiny and vice-chair of finance.
He was elected as an SDP–Liberal Alliance councillor for Kew on Richmond upon Thames London Borough Council in 1982, becoming a Liberal Democrat following the merger of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Liberal Party in 1988. In 1990, he was re-elected as a Liberal Democrat.[1] Lourie spent fourteen years as Leader, and also served as Deputy Leader and Leader of the Opposition. He lost his seat in 2010.
In 1989 he was awarded a fellowship by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. From 1990 and 1994 he chaired the London Boroughs Grants Committee, awarding grants of around £29m to the voluntary sector in Greater London.[14] He was a board member of the London Tourist Board where he deputised for the chairman, Sir John Egan. He chaired the Independent Panel on members' remuneration for the Association of Police Authorities[15] and was a member of the Metropolitan Police Committee.[16]
He is a board member of Richmond Charities[17] and of Kew Community Trust[18] as well as chairing Poems in the Waiting Room,[19] a British charity providing poetry cards to doctors' waiting rooms in England and Wales. He was a patron of Cultural Co-operation, a charity that ran world music festivals.
In 2015, he was appointed Chairman of the Charity Appeal Committee of Kingston Hospital to raise £750,000 to improve the treatment of patients with dementia.[20]
He lives in Kew, Greater London and is married with two children.[21] He is a regular runner, having completed five marathons, and he runs frequently in the Richmond Park parkrun.[8]