Councillor Green says her first term of office in 2003 has put her in good stead for the upcoming year.

"I will have a much more relaxed attitude this time. I would not say it was frightening but it was daunting. At the beginning you don't know what to expect," she said.

Councillors will elect the new mayor at the annual meeting of Dacorum Borough Council on Wednesday evening.

Cllr Green, who lives in Kingsland Road in Berkhamsted, was born just outside Pontypool in Wales in 1942.

She never knew her father, who went missing in action two weeks before her birth, but he had her name painted on the side of his Spitfire.

Her childhood was spent being ferried between different sets of grandparents and her mother, who remarried.

Cllr Green settled in Berkhamsted with her husband in 1972 but the marriage broke down, though they had a boy and a girl and she is now a grandmother.

Conservative politics is in her blood and she was a founder member of the Young Conservatives group in Westminster in 1963.

Cllr Green's charity for the year will be the same one it was first time round, the Dacorum Community Trust.

"They can help individual people and families when they need help at short notice," she said.

"I just want to do my best to represent the borough. I'm there to help people in any way I can.

"I'm just looking forward to doing my best for the borough."

Outgoing mayor Brian Ayling raised around £30,000 during his term for his charity the Iain Rennie Hospice at Home.

He said he was particularly impressed with the various volunteers he met over the year.

"Their dedication and enthusiasm for what they do is beyond anybody's understanding," he said.