Deputy Head of Mission Dominick Chilcott

Dominick Chilcott took up post as the Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Washington in January 2008.
 
Dominick is a career diplomatic service officer. He joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1982 and worked on South African issues, before being posted as a press and political officer to Ankara in 1985, having studied Turkish. In 1988, he returned to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office for more work on African affairs (Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi). In 1990, he moved within the FCO to the then European Community Department (Internal), where he stayed for three years, specialising in Gibraltar. In 1993, he was posted as head of the political section to Lisbon. In 1996, he returned to London to be Private Secretary for European, Transatlantic and Middle Eastern affairs, working successively for two Foreign Secretaries, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and the late Mr Robin Cook.
 
In 1998, Dominick moved to the UK's Permanent Representation to the European Union in Brussels where he served as the Counsellor for External Affairs, focusing on the expansion of the EU, its trade and development policies and the Union's relations with third countries, including the US. After Brussels, in Autumn 2002, he returned to the FCO to become the head of the Iraq Policy Unit, which coordinated the UK's work on the post-conflict reconstruction of Iraq, a job that involved close coordination with the US administration.
 
In June 2003, Dominick became the Director for bilateral relations with Europe with responsibility for the FCO's resources in over 40 countries. In that capacity, he worked, in particular, in support of the UN Secretary General's efforts to find a solution to the Cyprus problem and on many Gibraltar-related issues, including negotiating a new and more liberal constitution for the territory.
 
In 2006, Dominick was appointed High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, taking up his post in Colombo in April. He left Colombo in January 2008 for Washington.
 
Dominick was born in 1959. After school at St Joseph's College, Ipswich, he served in the Royal Navy for a year. He studied philosophy and theology at Greyfriars Hall, Oxford University. He is married and has four children.