Honorary Secretary

Desmond Hutchinson was born in Kensington London, into a family of many generations of military service, both British and (up to the end of WW1) Indian.  He studied at Bedford School and then entered RMA Sandhurst, gaining his commission in December 1966 in the Royal Artillery, serving 1 completed officer tour in Germany, marrying his first wife Malti in 1969. After leaving the Army, he trained as a solicitor in Cambridge, and became a partner with the firm of Francis & Co, specialising in commercial property litigation. He set up his own practice in 1990 in Enfield, (having obtained an MBA through Henley Management College), specialising in Debt Recovery litigation, being one the first to develop and utilise computerised software for such purposes, as well as commercial litigation and company law. He  opened a second office in Cambridge and took over the Enfield practice of Daultry & Keen, and before merging with the Cambridge firm of Crossmans.  His wife, Malti, sadly died in 2001, in 2003 he married Shireen, and moved to Farnham in 2005 where he became a consultant (and later a director) solicitor with Burkill Govier, for whom he continues to work, continuing to specialise in Commercial Property Litigation and Company Law.

Desmond is secretary of the Code of Practice Committee of the National Office of Animal Health, a self-regulatory body dealing with animal health pharmaceutical promotion.  He became a trustee of AWVS in 2016 and became Honorary Secretary in December 2017. He and Shireen have three children and six grandchildren, between them.