Philip Wilkinson (British Army officer)

Colonel Philip Roy Wilkinson OBE (born October 1948)^[1] is a retired British Army officer who has served as the Wiltshire Police and Crime Commissioner since August 2021. He was re-elected in May 2024.

Wilkinson was educated at Sandhurst, from where on 25 July 1969 he was commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Artillery.^[2] He was a Major in that regiment by 1982^[3] and later served in the Commando and Parachute Brigades and the Special Forces. He retired from the British Army in 1998^[4] and was appointed Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) the same year.^[5]

Wilkinson continued to work in security roles, and by 2020 was working in Somalia for the Minister for Internal Security. This was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and he returned to Wiltshire and began to write a book of memoirs, Sharpening the Weapons of Peace,^[6] while becoming a senior research fellow at King's College London.^[7]

Wilkinson stood successfully for the Conservative Party as Wiltshire's police and crime commissioner at the by-election on 19 August 2021,^[8] after the May 2021 election had failed to elect a qualified candidate.^[9] He was re-elected for a further term of four years in May 2024.^[10]