Paul Smith to leave Noctis

Paul Smith is to leave his role as executive director of Noctis, the trade body for late-night bar and club operators, at the end of the year.

The group is considering recruiting his successor from the someone with a local authority background.

Smith, who has been in the role for almost five years, is to become director of communications at the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television.

Smith previously held senior roles at Channel 4 Television, where he managed press and corporate affairs for much of the channel¹s factual and late night output. He was also head of press at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Smith said: "It's getting on for five years that I've done this job - it would be five years in April - so I thought it's time for a change. It's a decent stint.

"Some people may think it's been quite a frustrating period in some respects because we've had a lot of hard things to tackle.

"But I would say it's been quite the opposite, What we've managed to do is get partnership on the agenda; the fact is we have terrific relationships with the police and Government.

"When outrageously silly policies like alcohol disorder zones get on the statute books we have done a good job of talking to police and telling them it's not a good idea."

Noctis chairman Jon Collins, who was previously chief executive at Noctis' predecessor the Bar, Entertainment and Dance Association, said: "We don't need to rush [to find Smith's successor] because the structure of Noctis means I'm still on top of everything day to day,

"We can talk to the members and take stock."

He suggested that one option would be to recruit from among the "excellent people being laid off from local authorities at the moment" because authorities have such an important role to play.

Collins paid tribute to Smith.

"Five years ago, we were looking for someone who could be a credible and eloquent individual for the late-night industry during a particularly difficult time when it came to national policy making and media representation of our industry, and Paul fulfilled that brief marvelously.

"He has been doing a great job in terms of working with other trade organisations to make sure ADZs never took off and the worst excesses of the mandatory code never saw the light of day."