Billingsgate Seafood Training School

Billingsgate Seafood Training School is ideally located at the world famous London Fish Market and offers a range of courses to independent and multiple retailers, seafood industry professionals and the general public.

The school is a partner in the Seafood Training Academy, delivering standard and bespoke training programmes to a wide client-base, including Waitrose and the Compass Group. Courses are available for employees at all levels, from those just starting out in the industry to technical managers. They cover subjects including Quality Assessment, Food Safety, Knife Skills and City & Guilds in Seafood Retailing.

Billingsgate hosts two regular business seminars, ‘Introduction to Fishmongering’ and ‘Get into Fishmongering’ and seafood master classes which are primarily aimed at chefs but can prove useful to employees working in other areas of the industry.

The school has excellent practical kitchens for fish preparation and cookery lessons and a professional fishmonger knife skills training suite, complemented by a lecture room which can accommodate up to 40 people and access to the Market’s committee room for larger numbers.

Training courses are delivered Monday to Saturday, 6.15am to 10pm, to fit with activity at the UK’s largest inland fish and shellfish market which trades more than 150 species. Billingsgate includes guided market visits as part of many of the training courses offered which enable trainees to learn how to identify the different species of fish, assess quality and understand the merits of both wild and farmed fish.

Billingsgate is judged to be one of the leading seafood schools in the country and is a partner in the Seafood Training Academy the Champion of the National Skills Academy for Food and Drink Manufacturing’s Seafood network. The Seafood Academy brings together in partnership Seafish, Grimsby Institute and the four leading seafood schools to raise standards of training delivery and enable closer collaboration on skills and best practice. Employer partners include the Findus Group and M&J Seafood’s Ltd.

The Billingsgate Seafood Training School is a registered charity with the aim of promoting the awareness of fish to young people and to increase the knowledge of those people already working in the industry in areas such as retail and catering. All commercial activities undertaken by the school will fund courses for school children free of charge.