Fishworks, the seafood restaurants group, said today that founder and former chief executive Mitchell Tonks will step down as director with immediate effect.

The embattled fish restaurant chain said Mr Tonks will remain in an ambassadorial role, and focus on independent projects and his media career. It is latest in a number of management changes at the company. Mr Tonks had already reliquished the role of chief executive to Paul Goodale, previously the chain's chief operating officer.

FishWorks chairman Gary Ashworth, said: "Mitch's passion, vision and knowledge of the fish industry is second to none. I am delighted with the way Paul Goodale has developed Mitch's original vision for FishWorks since taking over as Chief Executive in November 2007. We wish Mitch the best of luck with his future projects."

The company also said in a statement that it was continuing with its strategy to pulling out of “underforming, non-core sites.” FishWorks said it had successfully disposed of its Notting Hill site and remained in talks to pull out of more.

In April, the struggling restaurant chain said pretax losses for the six months to 31 January, 2008, widened to £2.6 million from just over £700,000, a year ago.

However, in an attempt to reverse the trend over the past few months the company has implemented a number of changes, including redesigning the menu, longer trading hours, a central reservations system and additional fundraising, which the company says is starting to pay off. The model of the new flagship restaurant on London’s Swallow Street, now FishWorks's busiest site in terms of sales, is to be rolled out to other sites.

The company was rescued in February last year, when Gary Ashworth, the recruitment entrepreneur who is now FishWorks chairman, and Luke Johnson, the chairman of Channel 4, bought a a 33 per cent stake in the operator between them as part of a £2.5 million equity fundraising at 6p per share.

Today, the company was valued at around £5.6 million at 5p a share, down 0.25p. Following the recent fundraising, the combined holding of Mr Ashworth and Mr Johnson has been diluted down to 22.2 per cent.

Analysts said that with the current economic slowdown, the whole restaurant sector was preparing itself for tough times ahead, but historically fish restaurants were notoriously hard to make successful.

Greg Feehely, analyst at Althium Securities, said: “The only consistent good performance from a fish restaurant has come from Loch Fyne restaurants, which is almost entirely down to excellent management.

“One of the things about fish is you often have to pay the daily price for it, so there can be huge fluctuations in price. Although there is food price inflation across the board, with many things you can buy forward for the next 12 months, such as beef and chicken, whereas you can’t do that with fish.

“With overfishing in certain areas, and some substantial short term shortages, you can get substantial price hikes.”

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