Lights, camera, succession: Nigel Warner to helm UK’s Pact

MUMBAI: After 25 years at the helm, John McVay is finally leaving the building. The outgoing chief executive of Pact, Britain’s trade association for independent television and film producers, is handing over to Nigel Warner, a political operator turned creative industries fixer who’s spent more than a decade whispering policy sweet nothings into Westminster’s ear.

Warner, currently UK policy consultant to the Motion Picture Association and special counsel at Lexington, will take the reins on 2 March 2026. McVay exits at month’s end, closing a chapter that’s seen British indies become the envy of the global television market.

The new boss brings heavyweight credentials. He cut his teeth as special adviser to Mo Mowlam at the Northern Ireland Office and later served Tessa Jowell when she ran the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. After government, he steered public affairs at ITV for four years before co-founding Creative Access, a social enterprise hell-bent on dragging the media into demographic reality.

“Nigel brings a forensic understanding of the policy landscape,” said Pact chair and managing director of Raise The Roof Productions Jane Muirhead who led the search. “He has a solid grasp of all the current and upcoming challenges facing the sector.”

Warner’s in-tray won’t be light. British independent producers face streaming upheaval, artificial intelligence disruption and the eternal struggle to maintain terms of trade with broadcasters and platforms. His Rolodex—spanning the Royal Television Society, Business LDN’s Cultural Council and the Creative Industries Council—suggests he knows who to call.

“The work of our indie producers makes for one of the most dynamic creative sectors this country has,” Warner said, deploying the obligatory patriotic flourish. “We have an indie sector that is the envy of the world and I will do everything in my power to make sure it stays that way.”

McVay, for his part, sounded genuinely pleased to pass the baton to someone he’s “known and worked with for many years.”

Translation: the handover should be drama-free, which in this industry counts as a plot twist.