British amateur boxing's bid to build on its triple medal success in Beijing last summer has suffered another setback after performance director Kevin Hickey resigned his position with immediate effect.

Hickey cited personal reasons for his decision to quit just eight months into his post, admitting he had come to his decision at the end of July irrespective of the results at last week's World Championships.

The British team's failure to return from Milan with any medals had served to further highlight the difficulties faced by the sport's new regime following the outstanding success of Hickey's predecessor Terry Edwards.

Hickey told the Press Association: "When I was employed it was on a contract of four days per week but in fact it turned out to be seven. It was impacting on my family life and that has to be my priority.

"I have overseen a lot of succession planning and I am not in the slightest doubt that we now have the system in place under head coach Kelvin Travers which is going to achieve significant success in London."

Hickey had always faced a battle to make the job his own in the wake of the departure of Edwards, whom the newly-constituted British Amateur Boxing Association controversially decided not to keep on.

And questions are bound to be asked over the BABA's decision to appoint Hickey to what was effectively a part-time contract despite the tremendous task facing him to sustain the push towards 2012.

BABA chairman Derek Mapp told the Press Association: "Kevin took the job with an agreement to get the structure right and form a template of what we needed to do in terms of rebuilding the squad after Beijing.

"We needed to see how the BABA was going to evolve and we now face a very different set of challenges with the inclusion of women's boxing at the Olympics and the new World Series in which London will have a franchise.

"To that end the BABA will axe the job of performance director held by Hickey and Edwards in tandem with his former head coach role before him, and instead appoint a new chief executive.

"We need a transition to someone who has a background in elite sport but with commercial expertise as well. The head coach role held by Kelvin Travers will remain how it has always been.

"I think we are on track. I think we have got a significant amount of work to do but results at the Worlds were exactly in line with what we thought they would be. We're confident that what we said we would do for London, we will do."