A long-serving Norfolk county councillor, Ingrid Floering Blackman, who has died aged 75, was also a pioneering television journalist.

After starting as a researcher with Anglia Television in 1960 on £10 a week, she later became the only woman producer for five years on the Granada's award-winning investigative series, World in Action.

In 17 years behind the camera, she also secured the first western interview with the Shah of Iran and investigated Scientology, filming the founder L Ron Hubbard. She worked with colleagues including John (now Lord) Birt, later director general of the BBC, and Martin Bell, former Tatton MP, who wrote 'the most marvellous football commentaries.'

Born in Norwich to Arthur and Lieselotte Floering, she was the oldest of three. Her father, who had established a Dereham business with a Dutch partner making specialist knives to slice sugar beet, was briefly interned on the Isle of Man in 1940. She went to St Felix School, Southwold, and won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge, to read historical geography. After winning an English Speaking Union award to spend a year in the United States, she did a post-graduate course at Oberlin College, Ohio. Later, determined to see as much of the country as possible, she drove 15,000 miles in a second-hand station wagon from the Mid-West to San Francisco and into Mexico.

In 1970 she was working as a producer for the London bureau of a West German TV station, covering current and foreign affairs. While filming in Ethiopia, she met her future husband, Derek Blackman, who was a Reuters correspondent. They married in November 1972 and then moved to Singapore, where their eldest son, Edmund was born. They returned to London where their daughter Anna was born. After the marriage broke down, she returned to the family home, Mowles Manor, near Dereham.

While caring for her mother and also raising two children, she was a co-author of a book on the plantation economy in the Third World. Her preliminary studies for a doctorate on the post-war Malaysian rubber industry at School of Oriental and Africa Studies at the University of London provided background material.

She also threw her energies into fundraising for a residential community for adult learning, Thornage Hall, near Holt, which is part of the Camphill Village Trust.

An active member of the Mid-Norfolk Conservative Association and later chairman, she helped to run the 1987 election campaign for Richard Ryder, later John Major's chief whip and now Lord Ryder of Wensum.

In 1989, she was elected to Norfolk County Council for the Elmham and Mattishall division, which she served for 20 years. She took a keen interest in planning and became chairman of the joint advisory panel for the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Later, she was chairman of the National Association for AONBs. She was instrumental in the formation of the Norfolk Coast Partnership in 1991.

As cabinet member with responsibility for the environment, she was also a judge of the EDP Best Kept Village competition, later the Pride of Norfolk Awards.

Active with the Norfolk Historic Buildings Trust, she was chairman of governors of Fred Nicholson School, Dereham, a governor of Neatherd High School, Dereham and also of Gresham's School, Holt.

She leaves a son and daughter, and twin granddaughter and grandson.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, March 22 at 2pm at All Saints Church, Swanton Morley, Dereham. Donations to the Alzheimer's Society can be made to the funeral directors, Hendry & Sons of Foulsham.

Michael Pollitt