 He was appointed a Justice of the Peace for Wiltshire in 1980, as High Sheriff of Wiltshire for 1997–1998, and as a Deputy Lieutenant of the county in 1998.He served as Chairman of the Bristol Avon Flood Defences Committee from 1981 to 2000, and of the Wiltshire Magistrates' Courts Committee from 2001 to 2005, and was a Governor of Lackham College between 1986 and 1998.From 2004 to 2012 he was Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire, retiring at the age of seventy-five, to be succeeded by Mrs Sarah Rose Troughton, a cousin of H. M. the Queen.