Barclay leaves at the end of March and will be replaced by Christopher Macgowan, the president of Ben and former chief executive of the SMMT, for an interim period whilst the charity recruits a permanent successor.

Barclay, formerly the chief executive of Walon, the car logistics company, recently celebrated his 30th year in the industry and said he is planning to work as a freelance consultant. “My personal plans are to develop a small portfolio of advisory roles the first of which will be to help establish a start-up logistics operation,” he said “We have established a management team at Ben who are more than able to progress the many exciting initiatives both in fundraising and service provision. The financial position has been stabilised and will show a significant improvement in the order of £1m on last year,” he said. Commenting on his departure Christopher Macgowan said: “All of us involved in Ben know that the work we do is of vital importance and Gerard is leaving Ben with our reputation rightly at a high level and our finances in good order.”