Mencap chief executive Mark Goldring is to take up the same role at Oxfam GB, the charity has announced.

Goldring will join Oxfam in April this year. Its current chief executive, Dame Barbara Stocking, will be stepping down in February after 12 years in the role. Last September she told civilsociety.co.uk she was leaving the post to "seek a new challenge." 

Goldring has been chief executive of Mencap since 2008. Prior to this role he worked within international development as chief executive at VSO where he also worked in the field, as he did for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). He was also Oxfam's country director in Bangladesh in the early 1990s.

Of his appointment, Goldring said: "I am excited and humbled to be joining - or I should say rejoining - Oxfam in this role. I have loved my work with Mencap and would have left it now for no other job.

“But to lead Oxfam is an honour and an opportunity too important to resist. My commitment is to build on all that is strong in Oxfam and to support the development of the organisation and its work to make an even greater impact on poverty and injustice."

Karen Brown, chair of Oxfam GB, added: "A golden thread that runs through Mark's career is his commitment to inclusiveness and to tackling injustice.

"He brings great leadership and management experience. We recognised him as a practical visionary - the personification of Oxfam - with the ability to reach for the huge changes needed to tackle issues of global poverty, while ensuring effective, practical solutions. We are very excited that he is joining Oxfam."

Goldring was awarded a CBE in 2008 for services to tackling poverty and disadvantage. He was a member of the NHS Future Forum formed by the government in 2011 to discuss its health service reforms.

Oxfam has an annual income of more than £385m and employs nearly 5,000 paid staff and 22,000 volunteers in the UK and overseas.

Oxfam International, the international confederation made up of 17 affiliate organisations around the world including Oxfam GB, is expected to announce its new executive director shortly.