Sarah Sillars, one of the main driving forces behind the Institute of the Motor Industry over the last decade, will cease as executive chair of the organisation at the end of the 2012 to join a different skills body.

Sillars, who received an OBE in 2008 for services to skills training and the retail motor industry, has accepted the post of chief executive of Semta, the UK's Sector Skills Council for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies, joining it on October 10th with the role becoming full time in January 2013.

Semta said Sillars will resign as executive chair of the IMI, the Sector Skills Council for the Motor Industry, on December 31.

Sillars said: “I am delighted to join Semta as Chief Executive at such an important time for the organisation. We are in a changing skills landscape where employers have the opportunity to shape provision and co-invest in the design and delivery of vocational training.

"Semta is well-positioned, with strong employer backing, to make a real difference to the sector’s productivity and competitiveness with a range of targeted services and programmes."

An ageing workforce and continued technical advancement means that UK engineering and manufacturing needs to recruit and train 82,000 engineers, scientists and technologists by 2016 and to up-skill 363,000 of the technical workforce to achieve world class standards.