Two new independent members have joined the Seafish board, proving that even the seafood industry can produce a personnel announcement without anyone having to wrestle a wet haddock into a press office. Defra announced Pam Vick and Paul McCourt on 10 April 2026, with both appointed for first three year terms running from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2029. McCourt will also chair the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee. The harbour notebook has already applied for a lanyard.
Seafish is a non departmental public body working towards a sustainable and profitable future for the UK seafood industry. Its work includes regulatory guidance and services for catching, aquaculture, processing, importing, exporting, distributing, restaurants and retailers. In other words, it sits at the point where a fish becomes an industry and an industry becomes several more opportunities to request the correct form.
The appointments were made jointly by Defra, the Welsh Government, the Scottish Government and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland. The source says they followed the Cabinet Office Governance Code on Public Appointments, with merit and political activity playing no part in selection.
This is the sort of sentence that makes an official document feel faintly heroic. Somewhere, a governance code is standing in a doorway, asking whether everyone has demonstrated relevant experience before allowing the meeting to begin. The door is probably being opened by another committee.
Pam Vick brings experience in strategic commercial development, marketing, communications and board service. Paul McCourt has more than 25 years of financial leadership experience, including service as chief financial officer at InPost UK and executive roles at Menzies and Ingenico. The Audit and Risk Assurance Committee therefore has a chair who has probably met a spreadsheet in several different countries and asked it to explain its assumptions.
The Seafish board contains independent members and industry specialists. These two appointments replace independent positions, while specialist places will be replaced when available. It is sensible succession planning, designed to prevent a board from discovering that its institutional memory left in a taxi and remembered the destination only after the fare was paid.
The harbour notebook has filed the appointments under “people who know what they are doing” and launched its own campaign for committee status. Its manifesto promises shorter meetings, clearer minutes and biscuits protected from unauthorised consultation. It has also prepared a professional biography consisting of several years beside the kettle and an impressive record of being opened under pressure.
By the end of the afternoon, the notebook had secured neither a seat nor a lanyard. It did, however, receive the one honour every public body secretly craves: someone wrote “please circulate” on its cover.
Source: GOV.UK.
