Photo by Nick Fewings

The UK government must develop a strategic framework for managing competing demands on its coastal and offshore waters, a cross-party parliamentary committee has concluded, warning that fishing communities have lost confidence in the department responsible for supporting them.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee published its report, Resetting the relationship with fishing communities, on 24 April, setting out how DEFRA can help the UK fishing industry recover after what it describes as a series of avoidable failures in communication and policy design.

The case for a sea use framework

At the centre of the report is a call for a new ‘Sea Use Framework’, a strategic planning instrument, analogous to DEFRA’s recently published Land Use Framework, intended to bring coherent governance to the UK’s increasingly congested marine environment. The committee found that the coastline is being squeezed by competing demands from new energy infrastructure and marine conservation, with fishing at risk of being gradually crowded out. It also identified a lack of coherent governance between DEFRA and The Crown Estate, which owns some 103,400 square miles of seabed around the UK.

The proposed framework would need to be developed collaboratively, with fishing and coastal communities at its heart, and should include a formal mechanism enabling those communities to participate in decisions affecting them.

EFRA Committee Chair Alistair Carmichael MP said: “We also believe the Government needs to be more assertive in the management of the UK’s marine space by producing a Sea Use Framework, in a similar vein as DEFRA’s recent Land Use Framework. With this and all work streams, the voices of working coastal communities must be at the heart of government policy making.”

A fund without a rationale

The committee also scrutinised the government’s £360 million Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund, intended to invest in skills training, port infrastructure and fleet modernisation over 12 years. While the fund was broadly welcomed by the sector, MPs found that DEFRA had failed to clearly explain the rationale behind its size, duration, or design. Some fishers viewed it as a consolation offered after the government signed a 12-year reciprocal access deal with the EU, widely criticised for disadvantaging the UK industry, and no alternative explanation had been provided for why the fund’s term matches the length of that deal.

The committee was also surprised to discover that, under current plans, less than one-twelfth of the £304 million allocated to England would be provided within the first five years, and that DEFRA’s consultation list during the fund’s development had not included any communities in Cornwall – the local authority area with England’s largest fishing industry.

The report recommends that the fund prioritise projects driven by active fishing communities, and that from year two it should focus on fleet modernisation that reduces carbon emissions, alongside a place-based fishing advisory service.

Regulatory confusion and broken trust

Beyond the fund, the committee heard from fishers in Brixham and Charlestown about the cumulative impact of regulatory demands, fragmented policymaking and inadequate engagement with DEFRA. A specific flashpoint was the handling of new technical measures for 2026, when the sector was initially given only six months to prepare, before ministers announced a longer lead-in time that was never communicated to the Marine Management Organisation.

Carmichael was pointed in his assessment. “DEFRA’s Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund stands a chance of doing real, lasting good in fishing communities where morale and trust, after successive governments, is as low as the sea floor,” he said. “But it was to our surprise that the Department seemed unable to answer fundamental questions on how and why the Fund was set up in the way that it is. Alongside the botched communication with the sector about new technical regulations for 2026, these examples depict DEFRA as a ship without a sail, and somewhat divorced from the sector it is supposed to serve.”

To address this, the committee recommends that all officials working on fisheries policy undertake regular in-person engagement at ports – mirroring an existing DEFRA initiative that places civil servants on farms.

Transparency and regional planning

The committee also called on the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) to resume publishing routine inspection and enforcement data, which it had stopped producing, a decision MPs said had fuelled mistrust among stakeholders. The MMO is now developing a plan to reinstate publication, and the committee has recommended it also publish retrospective data covering the past three years to enable meaningful comparisons.

On governance more broadly, the report calls for DEFRA to establish a UK-wide network of Regional Fisheries Management Forums, bringing together fishers, marine scientists and environmental organisations. These forums would meet at least three times a year and be given a formal role in reviewing draft technical measures and submitting policy recommendations to government.

The full report, Resetting the relationship with fishing communities, is available on the Parliament website.