Supporting MMO to meet new EU regulations with modern delivery practices

The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) is an executive body of the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The MMO’s Fish Exports Service supports fishers by enabling them to create catch certificates that are needed by regulations to process and export fish.

Since the UK left the European Union (EU), catch certificates are required for UK businesses to export fishery products from the UK to the EU. The Fish Export Service needed to evolve to meet the new requirements in time for the new regulations to come into effect.

Defra commissioned Public Digital in July 2024 to work with MMO over a 4-month period. Our focus was on helping MMO prepare for the regulatory changes while supporting their evolution towards becoming an outcome-driven and user-centred organisation.

Prior to our engagement, MMO had already begun pursuing new ways of working and had started making progress. A recent ‘reset’ moment signalled a break from old ways of working and underlined a commitment to doing things differently. MMO had already started to build a multi-disciplinary team, and team and leaders were eager to explore and adopt new processes and workflows.

MMO needed to build on this to deliver an ambitious programme of change for the Fish Exports Service so it could meet updated EU regulations for January 2026. These ambitions required a broader service transformation effort, including the right team structures, embedded ways of working and enabling conditions supported by leaders at every level.

While there were promising early signs of multidisciplinary working in MMO, a fully multidisciplinary team and holistic approach had not been implemented. The separation between the ongoing service and the change programme – and the absence of collaboration with some key stakeholders – was preventing MMO from establishing shared and widely understood outcomes for the service. Meanwhile, key meetings between the service team and the leadership were missing opportunities to enable and unblock delivery and create the conditions for new ways of working.

We established and deployed a small expert team to work alongside MMO over the 4-month period to conduct in-depth discovery and provide coaching, advice and recommendations to support focus.

To understand MMO’s starting point, we engaged with teams and leaders at every level of the organisation. We reviewed internal documents, conducted 15 interviews with key stakeholders from the MMO, Defra and the Devolved Governments, and we observed a series of governance and team meetings. We focused on the current working environment to understand the ‘as is’ structures, enabling conditions and ways of working while also identifying what is needed to help MMO reach the desired future state.

We also worked closely with the delivery team to establish their working rhythms, craft their first roadmaps and begin maturing their practice. In parallel, we engaged with leaders – from SROs and service owners to digital and programme leads, helping them to develop leadership mindsets and approaches that will be most effective for the context of the service.

Across the engagement, our team role-modelled MMO’s desired worked behaviours and practices. This involved being radically user-focused, collaborative and open and transparent with all communications and outputs. This meant sharing our insights and learnings regularly with stakeholders through interim playbacks and group presentations.

In December 2024, we produced a comprehensive observations and recommendations report for MMO to use on their transformation programme. This included 12 key observations each with a set of practical, clear-cut recommendations based on where MMO is currently and what is needed to realise their ambition.

All of our recommendations have been accepted by the client and are being worked through. The impact of this work has been recognised by Michael Coyle, the

As a result of our work, we were commissioned by MMO in May 2025 to complete a similar project to support the Marine Planning and Licensing Programme.