The film and television producer Tony Garnett has died following a short illness at the age of 83.

The Birmingham-born producer was famed for his 13-year collaboration with director Ken Loach, with whom he worked on hard-hitting classics including Cathy Come Home and Kes.

His World Productions company said in a statement: “After a short illness, Tony Garnett, the legendary TV & Film Producer and founder of World Productions, died around midday on January 12.

“Tony was a great man and an inspirational producer who will be sorely missed by everyone who knew him.”

Garnett lost both his parents as a young child, his mother dying when he was five after a backstreet abortion. His father took his own life soon after. Garnett was raised by relatives, and went to a Birmingham grammar school before moving to London to study psychology at UCL.

Garnett met Loach in the 1960s after starting out as an actor in a series of BBC historical plays. However, after years of working for the BBC, he spoke out against the corporation, arguing that it was too London-centric and was uninterested in “poor people” except to “smirk at”.

Garnett’s scathing comments had followed a widely shared and published email he had sent to industry coworkers in 2009, in which he attacked “the executive apparatchiki” who “feed off” the creativity of others “because they have none”.