Sunderland had been criticised for allowing lucrative payouts to executives and investment bankers, and earlier on Monday a group of British public-sector pension funds had called for him to step down immediately.

Barclays said before its annual meeting in April last year that Sunderland would step down and be replaced by Gillies. It said at that time that Gillies would take over "at a date to be agreed, consistent with ensuring a smooth transition".

However, Sunderland is still chair of the bank's remuneration committee 11 months later.

"Having messed up remuneration for 2013 Sir John has stayed on as chair and presided over another year of still unacceptably high pay for 2014, and is still in place in March 2015," said Kieran Quinn, chairman of the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF), an association of 64 public-sector pension funds with combined assets of about 160 billion pounds.

Barclays said on Monday that Gillies would take over after the 2015 annual meeting "having now observed and participated in a full remuneration cycle as a committee member".

The bank said last week that it paid Chief Executive Antony Jenkins 5.5 million pounds last year, up from 1.6 million the year before. However, total bonuses paid by the bank fell by 22 percent to 1.86 billion pounds.

(Reporting by Matt Scuffham; editing by Simon Jessop and Pravin Char)