Hanham was parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department for Communities and Local Government from 2010 to 2013,[2] and was leader of the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council from 1989.

[4] That same year, Hanham was a candidate for the re-run Conservative nomination to be Mayor of London, losing to Steven Norris.

[5][6] The daughter of Alfred Spark and Mary Mitchell, she married, in 1964, Ian (or Iain) William Fergusson Hanham, an oncologist and also a member of the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council from 2002 until his death on 12 April 2011.

She became a Freeman of the City of London in 1984 and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1997 Birthday Honours for services to local government.

In January 2014 she was appointed the interim chair of health sector regulator Monitor.