Next steps for our strategic review

As a public body, we must carry out strategic reviews from time to time. We started this review in late 2020 by consulting with the four fisheries administrations. Over the summer of 2021, we have been asking businesses and individuals in the seafood industry for their views on Seafish as part of our current strategic review. 

During the industry consultation we:  

• Ran six virtual stakeholder workshops including a workshop with our Young Seafood Leaders Network
   
• Spoke to 65 people from across the seafood supply chain in the UK through these workshops. Participants included trade bodies and federations representing thousands of members. We also spoke to small, medium and large businesses.
   
• Hosted an online survey for six weeks with 239 completed responses from individuals and organisations across the seafood supply chain 

The consultation covered questions about the work we do now, what work we might do in the future and how the levy system could evolve to help fund that work.  

We would like to thank everyone who took the time to tell us how we can best serve the seafood sector in the UK in the future.  

What happens now?

We are now analysing the findings to understand what they mean for the work we do, how we work, and how we are funded. This analysis will pull together the responses from all three parts of the consultation. The findings of the review and a package of recommendations will be presented to the Seafish Board at the November Board meeting.

Once the Board has agreed on the recommendations these will be shared with the four fisheries Ministers for approval and, in time, implementation. We hope to be able to share the results of the Strategic Review with the industry in early 2022.  

A Strategic Review Steering Group, which includes all four government administrations, is overseeing the process to ensure the strategic review fulfils the Government’s needs for a review of a public body

Will anything change?  

Not right now. The way we work and collect levy remains the same. The four fisheries administrations need to review, discuss and agree any recommendations and we expect that process to take some time.  

In the meantime, we will continue to support the UK seafood industry to thrive through our work which is set out in our current Corporate Plan and 2021/2022 Annual Plan (follow the links below).

We have had agreement to extend our 2018 to 2021 Corporate Plan for another year to allow the strategic review outcome discussions to take place.  

For more information on the strategic review, visit our page on the Strategic Review.