Help for Heroes co-founder and chief executive Bryn Parry has announced plans to step down at the end of the year, along with co-founder and wife Emma Parry.

A statement on the charity’s website said the pair will continue to offer support as ambassadors for the charity.

In a letter to the charity’s trustees, Parry said much had happened since founding the charity in 2007 but the “time has come to hand over and let others take this wonderful organisation into its next phase”.

“The charity is well led, correctly governed, properly funded and in a strong position to face whatever challenges the future may bring. But it needs a different set of skills to mine to take it forward,” he said.

Parry said his time at the helm of H4H, was a “demanding but rewarding” nine years.

“I had expected to run H4H for nine months before returning to my life as a cartoonist and designer, but instead have been chief executive for nearly nine years,” he said. “It has been the most demanding but rewarding period of my life and something of which I will always be immensely proud.”

Parry said he will offer help for the trustees to find a successor with the aim of handing over to a new candidate by the end of the year.

But he said he will offer his “continued services and support” in his capacity as co-founder for “as long as needed”.

Last week, the charity’s chair Alex Scott-Barrett, said co-founders, Bryn and Emma Parry, have been “central” to the charity’s success over the past nine years and announced that he has started the formal recruitment.

Last year, the charity had an income of £37.2m, up from £33.9m the previous year. Income had peaked at £46.6m in 2011.

The charity also recieved media criticism for "spending millions on empty beds", according to the Times newspaper.