APPG Unveils Groundbreaking 38-Point Roadmap to End Decades of “Sea Blindness” in UK Fishing

The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) ⁠​​​​​​​‌‌​‌‌‌‌​‌‌​‌‌‌​​‌​‌‌‌‌‌​‌​​​⁠on Fisheries launched its Action Plan for a Thriving and Sustainable UK Fishing Industry at the historic Fishmongers’ Hall on the evening of 9 September, calling on Government to treat fishing and seafood as part of the UK’s critical national infrastructure and to set out a coherent, long-term strategy for the sector within the next twelve months.

The cross-party Group, chaired by former Fisheries Minister and Independent Parliamentary Chair Daniel Zeichner MP, alongside APPG Co-Chairs Alistair Carmichael MP and Melanie Onn MP, built the 90-page Action Plan on months of evidence gathered from fishermen, processors, scientists, regulators and coastal communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. What emerges is the most comprehensive blueprint for UK fishing policy since Britain left the Common Fisheries Policy, setting out 38 recommendations that touch every part of the catching sector, from quota allocation and marine spatial planning to the visa cliff-edge threatening crew supply and the multi-year funding the industry has demanded for years.

The report was compiled by Lia ní Aodha, a former editor of The Skipper, whose grasp of the catching sector on both sides of the Irish Sea is stamped through every page of what stands as a genuinely stunning piece of industry research, in both the depth of evidence gathered and the clarity of the final document.

A Strategic Asset, Not an Afterthought

The APPG’s case rests on food security. In 2024, UK vessels landed 745,000 tonnes of fish and shellfish, while the UK imported more than 1.1 million tonnes of seafood. The Group is careful to note that much of the domestic catch is exported and that many imports simply reflect UK consumer tastes, but argues the scale of that gap points to a reliance on global supply chains that recent geopolitical shocks have shown can no longer be taken for granted. Government itself has acknowledged that, while the UK remains food secure today, the conditions underpinning that security are shifting. Preserving the capacity to feed the nation from its own waters, the APPG argues, is strategic insurance against future disruption.

Evidence gathered during the inquiry painted a picture of an industry facing cumulative pressure from every direction at once: rising costs, competition for space at sea, changing environmental conditions, workforce shortages and reputational headwinds, described by industry contributors as a “perfect storm” and “death by a thousand cuts.” The APPG also heard of fragmented governance and a legislative framework increasingly out of step with the operational reality of fishing businesses, alongside a consistent call for meaningful Government support.

“For an island nation, we are strikingly blind to the value of our own seas. We have a vital domestic sector that helps feed the country, sustains coastal communities and is, in every meaningful sense, part of our critical national infrastructure. Yet we continue to look past it. This Action Plan sets out a clear framework to address this. What the sector now needs is a coherent, long-term strategy, and this Plan offers Government an actionable basis to deliver it.”

— Daniel Zeichner MP, Independent Parliamentary Chair, APPG on Fisheries

The Foundational Ask: A National Fishing Strategy Within 12 Months

Recommendation 1, described by the Chairs as the single, foundational recommendation underpinning everything else in the plan, calls on Government to publish a coherent, long-term strategy for UK fishing and the wider seafood sector within the next 12 months. Crucially, the report wants fishing formally recognised as part of the UK’s Critical National Infrastructure, developed jointly with the devolved administrations and industry, and nested within the UK’s forthcoming Sustainable Ocean Plan (due in 2027) while retaining its own distinct identity rather than being absorbed and diluted within it.

Two further recommendations build directly on that foundation. Recommendation 2 calls for seafood to be properly counted in UK food security assessments, closing a long-standing data gap that currently prevents seafood from being measured on the same production-to-supply basis as terrestrial food categories. Recommendation 3 asks Government and the devolved administrations to set measurable targets for seafood supply, domestic consumption and food security contribution, reported with the same seriousness as environmental targets under the Fisheries Act 2020.

“We have long engaged with the work of the APPG and were glad to be involved in this process. While it is certainly not easy to set out a strategy that can cover the complexity of UK fisheries and navigate the realities of a devolved fisheries landscape, we firmly support the core tenet that fishing should be part of Scotland and the UK’s critical national infrastructure. SFF’s regular polling shows that the Scottish public values our fishing industry, and we need our governments to value it too. This Action Plan could help set us on a course for a successful and sustainable future.”

— Elspeth Macdonald, Chief Executive, Scottish Fishermen’s Federation

Four Pillars, Four Enablers

The heart of the plan is built around a framework of four “key pillars” and four “cross-cutting enablers,” which the report recommends Government formally adopt as the architecture for its promised strategy (Recommendation 6). The pillars are Sustainable Management and Access to Space; Fleet Modernisation, Infrastructure and Technology; Workforce and Labour; and Supply Chains and Domestic Consumption. The enablers are Policy and Governance; Narrative and Social Licence; Science and Knowledge; and Funding and Investment. Recommendation 5 sets out six overarching strategic goals against which Government should establish measurable baselines: recognition of fishing’s value, improved public understanding and engagement, climate-smart adaptive management, a diverse and profitable industry, resilient and innovative businesses, and sustainable supply chains delivering nutritious seafood.

Sustainable Management and Access to Space

This is the largest single cluster in the report, running from Recommendation 7 through to Recommendation 13, and it is where some of the most politically sensitive material sits. Recommendation 7 demands that Fisheries Management Plans (FMPs), once published, are actually funded and implemented on time, building on the co-management approach used in drafting them. Recommendation 8 pushes for ecosystem-based, climate-informed management, closing evidence gaps and using the full range of scientific tools available. Recommendation 9 is likely to draw close attention from industry: it asks the four fisheries policy authorities to examine whether transparent, benefit-based criteria, building on the Quota Application Mechanism already trialled in England, could inform a more distributed allocation of fishing opportunities over time, while also identifying persistently underused allocations for redirection.

Recommendation 10 tackles the long-standing frustration with the crude 10-metre vessel length used as a proxy for “small-scale” fishing, calling instead for a multi-criteria definition based on operational scale, gear, range and dependence, applied consistently but flexibly across all four administrations. Recommendation 11 asks each nation to audit the capacity and powers of its inshore fisheries management structures.

Recommendation 12 goes to the heart of the marine spatial squeeze that has become a defining issue for both UK and Irish fleets in recent years. The report calls for fishing’s food production value to be weighted equally against other uses of marine space, rather than subordinated at the outset through pre-set prioritisation in planning frameworks, with cumulative displacement effects assessed properly and a formal statutory consultation route established for the industry. This directly echoes concerns raised repeatedly by Skipper readers over marine protected area designations and offshore wind expansion squeezing traditional grounds.

Recommendation 13 sets a high bar for any future capacity reduction: any move to cut fishing effort, including through decommissioning schemes, must be preceded by transparent, fishery-by-fishery evidence that excess capacity genuinely exists, before any such measure is designed.

Fleet Modernisation, Infrastructure and Technology

Recommendations 14 to 16 focus on the physical and technological state of the fleet. Recommendation 14 calls for a national assessment of harbour and shore-side infrastructure, covering berthing depth, cold-chain and processing capacity, and decarbonisation readiness, with funding schemes retargeted based on its findings. Recommendation 15 pushes for a programme of demonstrator vessels and a competitive R&D fund to develop new hull, propulsion, catch-handling and processing designs suited to the diversity of the UK fleet, paired with a robust evidence base on alternative fuel safety and reliability, explicitly linked to boosting domestic shipbuilding capacity. Recommendation 16 calls for a more enabling, outcome-focused approach to gear trials, judged against selectivity and environmental outcomes rather than prescriptive specifications.

Workforce and Labour

This is arguably the section with the sharpest deadline attached to it, and the one most likely to generate immediate headlines. Recommendation 17 calls for a dedicated, purpose-built immigration route for the fishing and seafood workforce, treating those coming to work in the sector as workers with attendant protections, alongside urgent action to address labour shortages. Crucially, it demands a short-term bridging solution be implemented before the current Skilled Worker visa eligibility for fishing roles disappears at the end of 2026, when the Immigration Salary List, currently the mechanism keeping fishing crew roles accessible under the Skilled Worker route, is due to be abolished and replaced with a still-undecided Temporary Shortage List.

That deadline is not abstract. Industry and labour rights groups have been warning for months that fishing may not survive the transition onto the new list, given the higher salary and English-language thresholds that now apply more broadly to the Skilled Worker route, potentially leaving vessels with no accessible legal route to recruit non-UK crew at all. The consequences of getting this wrong are already visible: recent Immigration Enforcement action against vessels in Fraserburgh and Mallaig, and warnings from Northern Ireland vessel owners about being forced to fish outside the 12-mile limit to avoid Skilled Worker Visa costs, underline exactly the kind of structural mess Recommendation 17 is aimed at fixing.

“Our boats continue to go to sea from ports across Northern Ireland, providing employment in our communities and putting food on tables here and around the world. But they face an uphill battle against a regulatory and legislative framework that makes their livelihoods unnecessarily difficult. While the UK’s diverse fleets face different challenges, including our own, many share the same root cause – the value of fishing is not recognised or supported. This Action Plan shows that, despite our diversity, it is possible to set out a framework that can support fishing right around the UK.”

— Dr Lynn Gilmore, Chief Executive, Northern Ireland Fish Producers’ Organisation

Recommendations 18 to 20 focus on the pipeline ⁠​​​​​​​‌‌​‌‌‌‌​‌‌​‌‌‌​​‌​‌‌‌‌‌​‌​​​⁠behind that immediate crisis: embedding fishing in schools’ careers guidance and backing the Young Fishermen’s Network (Rec 18), developing supervised sea-trips and a coherent school-to-sea pathway for new entrants (Rec 19), and building accredited, industry-appropriate training pathways aligned with Defra’s recruitment and retention roadmap (Rec 20).

Supply Chains and Domestic Consumption

Recommendations 21 to 23 address the gap between what the UK fleet lands and what UK consumers actually eat. Recommendation 21 calls for a gap analysis of the barriers to UK seafood moving through domestic supply chains, alongside support for industry-led traceability and ESG projects that turn existing compliance data into a market advantage rather than a cost. Recommendation 22 backs a sustained, NHS-linked “two-a-week” seafood consumption campaign framed around preventative health, alongside using public procurement to boost domestically landed seafood in schools, hospitals and other public settings. Recommendation 23 calls for investment in local landing, cold-chain and processing infrastructure to keep value in coastal communities rather than seeing it exported elsewhere in the supply chain.

The Enablers: Fixing How Decisions Get Made

Policy and Governance

Recommendations 24 to 28 target the machinery of government itself. The report wants a dedicated Minister for the Marine with a genuine cross-departmental mandate (Rec 24), full effect finally given to the balance of objectives already written into the Fisheries Act 2020 (Rec 25), a more deliberate, evidence-led approach to policymaking that engages industry from the problem-definition stage rather than after decisions are effectively made (Rec 26), practical co-management through properly resourced regional forums with a “you said, we did” transparency mechanism to rebuild trust (Rec 27), and a firm statement that decisions on UK waters should be made through the domestic Fisheries Act architecture, run alongside, not replaced by, continued scientific cooperation with the EU and other coastal states (Rec 28).

Narrative and Social Licence

Recommendation 29 stands alone under this enabler, calling for a jointly funded, evidence-based public narrative about fishing and seafood, coordinated through an independent “honest broker,” with particular effort directed at reaching younger audiences through schools and existing initiatives such as the Young Fishermen’s Network.

Science and Knowledge

Recommendations 30 to 33 push for a fundamental shift in how fisheries science is resourced and delivered. The report wants collaborative, co-produced science scaled up nationally, focused on data-poor, non-quota and inshore stocks (Rec 30); a coordinating function to unify fragmented data streams under a “gather once, use many times” principle (Rec 31); serious investment in the capacity to actually analyse the eLog, VMS and Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) data already being collected (Rec 32); and REM itself reframed as a collaborative science tool rather than purely an enforcement mechanism, a distinction the report argues is essential to building rather than eroding trust with the fleet (Rec 33).

Funding and Investment

The final five recommendations, 34 to 38, are where the plan gets most concrete about money, and where the political test of the whole exercise may ultimately be decided. Recommendation 34 calls for genuinely multi-year funding awards that can be drawn down against the real timelines of strategic projects, rather than being forced into single-year spending cycles. Recommendation 35 wants funding made genuinely accessible to smaller operators, reviewing match-funding and upfront cost requirements, and explicitly names the £360 million Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund (FCGF), calling for it to be delivered transparently and with the front-loading stakeholders have been demanding.

Recommendation 36 addresses a frustration familiar to anyone who has tried to modernise a boat under current rules: aligning funding conditions so that measures designed to prevent capacity growth do not end up blocking investment that actually improves safety, efficiency or environmental performance. Recommendation 37 pushes Government to go beyond grants entirely, using accelerated capital allowances, government-backed loan guarantees, outcome-focused gear trial rules and extended training support as levers to unlock private investment.

And Recommendation 38, the plan’s closing ask, is also its most urgent: Government must treat the current acute cost pressures facing the sector, above all energy and fuel costs hitting both catching and processing, as a matter of immediate viability distinct from the longer-term investment agenda covered elsewhere in the plan, and act now, including by ensuring fishing and seafood can access the same energy-cost support already available to other sectors of the economy.

Devolution, Recreational Fishing and the Fine Print

Beyond the headline pillars, the report devotes a section to “Operational Considerations,” acknowledging the cumulative weight of all these pressures landing on the same businesses at the same time, the practical realities of devolution across four different fisheries administrations, and the place of recreational fisheries within the wider picture, an area often overlooked in catching-sector policy debates but one the report treats as part of the same coastal economy.

“We’ve long called for a national fishing strategy, and have fully supported the APPG’s work to develop an Action Plan in its absence. This is a great industry with huge potential, but unless that potential is fully recognised and supported with a Government-led strategy in line with other sectors of the economy, we will continue to be pushed from one challenge to the next. The Government must recognise fishing as a valuable food- and job-producing sector of the economy, rather than an environmental management problem, or an impediment to offshore construction. We stand ready to work with them to achieve this.”

— Mike Cohen, Chief Executive, National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations

Why This Matters Now

What sets this Action Plan apart from the steady stream of sector reviews and stakeholder statements that have characterised UK fisheries policy since Brexit is its insistence that all 38 recommendations be treated as a single package, not a menu Government can pick from selectively. The report is explicit that the sector’s challenges are cumulative, and that a response addressing labour but ignoring funding, or narrative but ignoring marine space, will simply leave the industry facing the same “death by a thousand cuts” it described to the APPG in evidence.

“Through our inquiry, our wider work on the APPG and in our own constituencies we see first-hand the true value of UK fishing and seafood, alongside the challenges facing the industry. UK fishing can deliver good jobs, resilient coastal and island communities, thriving local economies, improved food security, better health outcomes, and healthy marine ecosystems. But to do this it needs support and a clear commitment from Government to deliver the long-term strategy the sector needs.”

— Alistair Carmichael MP and Melanie Onn MP, APPG Co-Chairs, joint statement

It is also, notably, not a Government document. The Action Plan was shaped by a Review Board drawn from a representative cross-section of industry stakeholders across all four UK nations, alongside an Expert Panel bringing together industry, academia, management, environmental and welfare organisations, but as an APPG output backed by 28 registered Members across seven parties, and developed with support from the Fishmongers’ Company’s Fisheries Charitable Trust and a Secretariat run by Bristol-based Mindfully Wired, it carries no statutory weight and commits no minister to anything. Its power lies entirely in the breadth of the evidence behind it, the cross-party standing of its authors, and the political pressure that a united industry response can now bring to bear on Defra and the devolved administrations.

“The Fishmongers’ Company and its Fisheries Charitable Trust are proud to have supported this cross-sector, cross-party inquiry, and thank the many experts whose insights helped shape it. The UK’s fishing and seafood sector sustains communities around our coasts and plays an important role in our food security, yet rarely gets the strategic attention it deserves. We hope this Action Plan – which brings together voices from across the industry and all four nations – informs a constructive conversation about a prosperous future for the benefit of those working in the sector, the environment and our island nation.”

— Eleanor Adamson, Head of Fisheries, The Fishmongers’ Company

With the Skilled Worker visa cliff-edge landing at the end of this year and the Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund still being rolled out, Government has an early, concrete opportunity to show whether it intends to treat this as a genuine roadmap or another report destined for the shelf.

Nothing in the plan requires new powers, new legislation, or a fresh mandate. What it needs now is political will, sustained across party lines and across all four devolved administrations, matched by industry itself standing behind the package rather than picking off the recommendations that suit any one part of the fleet. That combination, cross-party backing in Westminster, genuine buy-in from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and a united catching sector holding Government to the plan as a whole, is what would turn this Action Plan from a well-researched document into the moment that actually changes the future of UK fishing.

The full report is available at fisheriesappg.org/action-plan-report.

Related reading on theskipper.ie:
https://theskipper.ie/appgs-issue-statement-on-uk-fishing-and-coastal-growth-fund/
https://theskipper.ie/new-appg-charts-a-strategic-course-for-uk-fisheries-in-parliament/
https://theskipper.ie/uk-announces-four-new-mpas-including-dogger-bank/
https://theskipper.ie/new-plan-for-uk-crab-lobster-fisheries/