Calveley will join the RFU on June 13 from UK Sport, where he has been head of corporate and international relations, and is one of several appointments made following some reorganisation of the RFU by John Steele, who moved to Twickenham as chief executive last year from UK Sport.

Steele, who last week announced the appointment of Youth Sport Trust chief executive Steve Grainger as rugby development director at the RFU, said: "Although we are the governing body of the game in England we are part of a global game so this is a growing area of importance for us, and indeed for all sports.

"Our reputation and relationships with governments and quasi-governmental organisations will be critical to our success and our collaboration and involvement with other domestic and international rugby stakeholders equally so.

"Ben is one of the leading people in this emerging area and we are delighted to have been able to attract him to the RFU."

Calveley will take responsibility for all the RFU's relationships with governments in the UK and overseas and will also co-ordinate and manage the Union's interactions with other key international stakeholders in rugby and other sporting organisations at home and abroad.

UK Sport are currently working on a strategy to replace Calveley and a UK Sport spokesperson told insidethegames: "Ben won't be leaving us for a while yet so we are now currently discussing internally how best to replace him given the mix of responsibilities and will be advertising in due course."

Calveley will report to Peter Thomas as director of communications and will therefore play a key role in overseeing the RFU's marketing and communications activities in the lead up to the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

During the four years spent at UK Sport, Calveley expanded his responsibilities beyond straightforward public affairs to include communications and international relations – an area that witnessed significant growth during this period as he led a team advising all Olympic and Paralympic sports on how to increase their influence internationally.

Calveley joined UK Sport from PMP, the sports consultancy, where he led the football division and managed complex domestic and international sport projects involving multi-disciplinary teams.

That included advising on how to develop grass root and elite sporting systems in a number of international markets, working with Sport England to monitor and evaluate impact of community funding awards and working with Premier Rugby Limited (PRL) on eligibility criteria for top division clubs.

Prior to that, he was a sports development manager for Merseyside Sport driving sports participation programmes in the North West.

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