OXFAM GB has a new chief executive, with the appointment of Mark Goldring.

He will lead the organisation, which delivers development and humanitarian work in more than 50 countries, has an annual income of more than £385 million and employs nearly 5,000 paid staff and 22,000 volunteers in the UK and overseas.

He will also continue Oxfam’s work to bring the issues faced by the world’s poorest people to a global stage, meeting Government and business leaders, to influence them to act against the causes of poverty.

Since 2008, Mr Goldring has been chief executive of UK disability charity Mencap, which employs 7,500 staff and works to improve the lives of the UK’s 1.5 million people with a learning disability and their families.

Before that role he had decades of experience within international development, both as chief executive of VSO and in the field for VSO, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and as Oxfam's country director in Bangladesh in the early 1990s.

Karen Brown, chairman of Oxfam GB, said: “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.”

Mr Goldring read law at Oxford and has a Masters in social policy and planning in developing countries from London School of Economics. He was awarded a CBE in 2008 for services to tackling poverty and disadvantage.

He 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.”

Mr Goldring will join Oxfam during April. Current chief executive, Dame Barbara Stocking, will be stepping down in February, after nearly 12 years in the role.