He had been serving in the role since March following the departure of Pat Myhill.

Coffey will continue to oversee the development of science and medicine, testing, and intelligence and investigations programmes at UKAD.

He has worked at UKAD, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and UK Sport for 19 years.

Coffey joined UK Sport in 2004 as doping control administrator and has gone on to hold a number of roles at UKAD and became deputy director of operations (Testing) in 2018 where he was responsible for the strategic oversight of UKAD’s risk-based intelligence-led testing programme covering more than 40 sports.

"Hamish is a well-respected figure in the anti-doping community and his extensive experience over many years is unrivalled," UKAD chief executive Jane Rumble said.

"Hamish is an organisational leader who has been involved in a number of strategic projects to deliver anti-doping programmes across major events and international governance.

"His natural progression to lead UKAD’s Operations Directorate, an integral function of anti-doping to protect clean sport, is very well deserved."

As well as his roles in Britain, Coffey is also a WADA auditor for the WADA Code compliance monitoring programme and was previously chair of the WADA Independent Observer Team at the 2019 European Games in Minsk.

"As a sports fan, I feel passionately that athletes are able to play and win fairly and for this, I’m delighted to have been appointed director of operations," he said.

"I’m privileged to work with such a fantastic team at UKAD who have an unrivalled knowledge of anti-doping and I look forward to working with them to continue our mission to protect sport from doping in the UK."