Thursday 14th May 2026
Press release from Warminster Town Council:
The retiring Mayor of Warminster, Cllr Andrew Cooper, has passed on his thanks to the people of Warminster as he looks back at a successful year for the town as Mayor, describing it as an “enormous privilege.”
Cllr Cooper has enjoyed his year as Mayor helping continue to champion a thriving and growing business community, supporting events in the Lake Pleasure Grounds and across the town as well as highlighting the work of the “wonderful” Warminster community.
He has also raised more than £2,000 for two local charities, raising £2,190 for Wiltshire Mind and Open Door Warminster, during his municipal year which included a very popular Mayor’s Charity Tea Dance.
Speaking after Cllr Jack Jones took over as the new Mayor of Warminster on Monday 11th May, Cllr Cooper said: “I have reflected upon what I had let myself in for and my reflections encouraged me to draw two simple conclusions: first, what an enormous privilege it has been and second, how many thanks I owe to so many people for the trust they placed in me and the kindness and support so many have contributed to my term of office that followed.
“Thank you to you, my colleagues and fellow councillors not just for placing your trust in me this time last year but more importantly for your support, patience, understanding and good humour throughout the last year.
“Thank you to the officers and all who are employed by the town council. Without their dedication, hard work and advice so often and so freely and kindly given I have no doubt I would have floundered.”
‘This is a wonderful town’
“Please forgive and indulge my sense of tradition and my somewhat old-fashioned view of things when I say this: it is often mooted that behind every good man is an even better woman. I suggest to you all this evening that behind every good Mayor there is an even better team of councillors and officers making it all happen. It is extremely presumptuous of me to apply the adjective ‘good’ to my term of office, but I think you may take my point.
“We are a team here in the council chamber and offices at the Civic Centre and so any credit for the last year should be shared equally with all of you.
“For my purposes this evening to ‘team’ I add the collective noun ‘community’ and, bearing that in mind I hope you will not consider it disrespectful to you all here in this chamber, if I reserve my greatest thanks for the good people of Warminster.
“This is a wonderful town. Of course, we are not immune from difficulty in Warminster but what I see and hear on a daily basis – a thriving and growing business community, families with their children happily playing in the Lake Pleasure Grounds, people greeting each other in the street and reaching out to each other, bus drivers dropping the elderly at their front doors and carrying their bags for them, not forgetting the hugely popular and successful public events.
“I could go on and on about the wonders of this town we are blessed to call home and the great hope I have for its future, but my successor is undoubtedly keen for me to return to the backbenches.
“A respectful reminder to my successor at this point: the backbenches, as it were, is where the real hard work is done and the Mayor and Chair of the council cannot function without them.
“Thank you once again to you all, each and every one of you, and may I end by offering publicly my unreserved support and loyalty to my successor.”
For more information contact Warminster Town Council, Tel: 01985 214847 or email: admin@warminster-tc.gov.uk
