Councillor Melvin Collins

Hi, my name is Melvin Collins. I'm age 74. I was born visually impaired with congenital cataract. I was a rubella baby as we were known in those days. I went to boarding school. After that I came into public life really in the late 60s through charity work and have done that ever since. I became a counsellor in 1990 and I just started my 22nd year because I had a breakaway, served on Social Services Committee, Housing Planning which is a committee I love and done many things in the voluntary sector including being chair of a luncheon club, representative on Disability Network, Hounslow Community community network and engage with the people on many levels including going to many community group meetings to hear what they've got to say. In my work I was an engineer for 14 years in Chiswick and in Brentford and then I moved to Barclays Bank as a telephonist, as a customer service advisor and finished in Premier Banking as a client services advisor before coming back to the council in 2010. I was also a school governor for 30 years but still have attachments to the school and have just actually come from a church service with the school children which was really nice. I have a wife and I have two sons to my first marriage Douglas and Robert and one of those is a firefighter and the other one is a driving instructor so I'm a very proud dad and and I have two granddaughters.