Apple has promoted Sir Jonathan Ive, the British designer responsible for most of the company’s biggest hits in recent years, to the position of chief design officer at the company.

Jony Ive, whose previous title was vice president of design, will continue to be responsible for all of Apple’s design work, “focusing entirely on current design projects, new ideas and future initiatives”, according to Apple chief executive Tim Cook. But Ive’s day-to-day managerial responsibilities will be delegated to the new vice presidents of industrial design and user interface design, Richard Howarth and Alan Dye.

Ive’s promotion, first reported by British TV presenter and writer Stephen Fry in an interview with Ive for the Telegraph, frees him up to “travel more”, he told Fry.

“Among other things, he will bring his energies to bear – as he has already since their inception – on the Apple stores that are proliferating around the world,” Fry wrote.

But the promotion has been interpreted by some as allowing him to live in England, something which Ive, who has two children, has reportedly been keen to do for many years.

For most of Ive’s tenure at Apple he was in charge of industrial design – broadly, the physical design of the company’s hardware products. But in June 2013, Ive was promoted from senior vice president of industrial design to senior vice president of design, taking user interface design under his remit following the ouster in 2012 of Apple’s previous software lead, Scott Forstall.