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If you don’t want to read the full 1,800 words, go to the 300-word TL;DR summary

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During last month’s General Synod, I published several points about different debates. I held off on the key debate about independent safeguarding. That wasn’t because I didn’t care about it, but because I cared about it too much to rush a response. I have now had time to consider where the Church of England is on its move to independence in safeguarding, and these are my thoughts.

When the Church of England’s Archbishops’ Council sacked its “Independent” Safeguarding Board (ISB) in June 2023, the Archbishops’ Council promised swift action to put something better in its place. It commissioned Professor Alexis Jay to set out what independence would have to mean if the Church was to rebuild even a fraction of the trust it has lost.

The General Synod was not given the option to debate Professor Jay’s proposals in full. Instead, in February 2025, it debated “options” put forward by an Archbishops’ Council committee. After the February 2025 debate and vote, the synod received an interim report in July 2025 and a further update in February this year.

And yet, after all that, the Church of England is still only able to talk in generalities about “direction of travel”.

That phrase has become a comfort blanket. It sounds purposeful. It feels dynamic. It allows speeches about momentum and culture change. It also enables a familiar institutional manoeuvre: kick the can down the road — make promises that it is “moving forward” while moving the decisive action point further away.

The synod that couldn’t decide what “independence” meant

The February 2025 debate ought to have been a watershed. It came in the wake of Justin Welby’s resignation as Archbishop of Canterbury following the Makin review and the John Smyth scandal — an episode that intensified public scrutiny of safeguarding failures and institutional evasions.

Moving the motion, the Bishop of Stepney, Joanne Grenfell, framed the debate as being about building “the best foundations to support the work of our excellent safeguarding professional colleagues and volunteers”.

The chamber then filled with tributes to local safeguarding staff and volunteers. Again and again, bishops and members praised diocesan safeguarding advisers, diocesan teams and parish safeguarding officers.

The problem is not the gratitude. Most people in safeguarding roles will recognise the cost and strain of doing that work. The problem is the cognitive dissonance, which the synod never quite confronts.

If safeguarding in the Church of England is being delivered by “excellent safeguarding professional colleagues and volunteers”, why does GS 2429 still acknowledge that “many survivors do not have trust in the Church of England to properly manage safeguarding matters”?

If the system is so improved, why does the Church itself concede that “safeguarding complaints processes vary widely across dioceses and cathedrals”, and that this “undermines trust and leads to delays and confusion”?

You cannot reconcile those statements by congratulating everyone for trying hard.

Trust is not rebuilt by warm words. It is rebuilt by clarity, consistency and accountability. At the moment it mattered, the synod opted for none of those at speed.

In February 2025, the synod was asked to choose between two models (3 and 4), each claiming to deliver “greater independence” by transferring safeguarding staff to an external employer and by creating an external Scrutiny Body.

The motion as tabled would have made model 4 “the direction of travel”. But the synod did not choose that route. It endorsed model 3 “as the way forward in the short term” and called for “further work to be undertaken on the legal and practical requirements necessary to implement model 4”. That, in itself, was a decision to delay.

Some members argued that moving straight to model 4 risked creating a system that was “too big to fail”, citing concerns about trustee responsibilities and the Charity Commission’s expectations that trustees must retain the ability to intervene if safeguarding delivery fails.

Others stressed that “culture eats structure for breakfast”, and argued that diocesan safeguarding professionals embedded locally were best placed to challenge unhealthy patterns day by day.

But if delay is defensible, it must be disciplined. Delay needs a timetable, milestones and a defined decision point.

The synod did not impose them.

“Excellent safeguarding professional colleagues” — and a deficit of trust

Here is the line that should make the Church wince. The Bishop of Stepney told the synod that this debate was not about saving the Church’s reputation but about supporting “excellent safeguarding professional colleagues and volunteers”.

Later, the Bishop in Europe paid “tribute to the Church’s DSAs and DSTs”, saying the synod was “deeply grateful for the work that they do”.

These are not marginal voices. They are bishops, part of the Church’s senior leadership, speaking from the platform while the synod decides what independence is supposed to mean.

Now set those tributes alongside what members also said in the same debate.

One member said survivors “feel that the Church can no longer be trusted to manage its own safeguarding”. Another argued that “only complete independence within the Church of England will do”, warning against drifting into “independence-lite”.

GS 2429 later codifies the same reality in official prose: “many survivors do not have trust in the Church of England to properly manage safeguarding matters”.

So which is it? Excellent work, or a system unworthy of trust?

It is both — and that is precisely the Church’s problem.

You can have committed, skilled professionals working within a structure that victims and survivors experience as inconsistent, defensive, slow and conflicted. You can have good individuals inside a system that repeatedly fails to act with speed, transparency and independence.

The Church keeps trying to settle the argument by praising the individuals. It should be designing a system that does not depend on heroics.

The slow-motion reforms that became a way of avoiding reform

The July 2025 interim report promised that the programme team expected to bring “a substantial report” in February 2026 “that sets out firm proposals”. It acknowledged the urgency, while warning that legislation would take “at least two years”.

February 2026 arrived. The General Synod received GS 2429. It did not receive “firm proposals” in a form that could properly be debated and decided. Instead, it was asked to “welcome this update, endorse the direction of travel … and look forward to considering detailed proposals”.

That is the long grass in legislative language.

Worse, the synod had the chance to insist on deadlines — and declined.

An amendment would have required the Programme Board and Archbishops’ Council to bring forward, by July 2027, the “legislation and Code of Practice necessary” to establish the proposed Independent Safeguarding Authority and the mandatory national complaints framework.

Another amendment would have required detailed options and costings for transferring diocesan and cathedral safeguarding staff into independent employment under the new authority by July 2027, so that the synod could decide whether and when full local operational independence would happen.

Both amendments were lost. The motion was carried without them.

So the synod endorsed a “direction” while refusing to specify when the destination must be reached and refusing to require the information that would allow it to decide whether local operational safeguarding will ever be independent.

That is what kicking the can down the road looks like in ecclesiastical governance.

The shifting goalposts since Professor Jay

GS 2378 admits that the proposals brought to the synod “differ from the recommendations of Professor Jay in certain ways”.

That ought to have triggered a disciplined explanation of why those differences were justified and what risks were being accepted.

Instead, the Church has allowed its end-state to mutate.

GS 2429 says the 2025 model proposals “would need extensive legislation” and that “current safeguarding structures would continue to operate … for at least three years”. It then notes that stakeholders “reasonably expect much swifter progress” and proposes “a new end-state model” in response.

So we have moved from implementing a synodical decision to “knitting proposals together” into something new.

What is indefensible is not change, but vagueness. The synod is being asked to bless an evolving concept, with limited detail, on the promise that detail will come later.

This is precisely the governance failure that helped to doom the ISB: leaders “failed to define what they actually meant by independence”.

And yet, in February 2026, the synod again endorsed a general direction rather than a defined model with defined functions, duties, powers and measurable outcomes.

The functions that actually matter

The Church’s credibility in safeguarding is threadbare. If it wants to regain it, it must stop talking mainly about structures and start talking about functions.

GS 2378 identifies the core needs: consistency, equitable treatment and the reduction of “actual or perceived conflict of interest”. GS 2429 is blunter, acknowledging “perceived conflicts of interest”, particularly where clergy are seen to play decisive roles in safeguarding decisions concerning other clergy.

Whatever structure emerges, it must deliver at least four things:

• A single, mandatory complaints pathway with defined stages, defined timescales and a genuinely independent end-stage resolver.
  
  
• Independent scrutiny with teeth: standards, audits, published findings and enforceable follow-up.
  
  
• Clear operational independence for professional judgement — professionals whose independence of judgement is “respected and protected”.
  
  
• A disciplined decision about local operational independence, with a decision point set in the diary.
  
  

In 2025, the synod asked for further work. In 2026, it refused to require that work to be completed by a date certain.

That is not governance. It is avoidance.

A challenge to the Programme Board — and to the synod

The Safeguarding Structures Programme Board was created with a majority of independent members and an independent chair, explicitly because of the “lack of trust in the Church of England to deliver change”.

That is welcome. It is also an admission.

But the Board must now prove that it exists to deliver outcomes, not to launder delay.

Stop asking the synod to endorse “directions of travel”.

Bring concrete proposals that can be amended, debated and voted on. Put the functions on the page: who does what, when, with what powers, with what duty to comply, with what transparency, with what sanctions for failure, with what survivor access and support.

Do not hide behind complexity. Do not ask the synod to rubber-stamp aspiration. Treat it like a legislature, not a focus group.

And the synod itself must stop colluding in the evasion. If members believe the Church has “broken trust” and that rebuilding trust requires radical change, they must stop voting for motions that endorse a mood and defer the detail.

The Church has had enough “watershed moments”. It is time for measurable action: dates, duties, powers and deliverables — and a model that can be tested against the lived experience of victims and survivors, not against the institutional need to buy time.

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tl;dr Independence delayed: General Synod backs “direction” over deadlines

Nearly three years after the Archbishops’ Council sacked the Church of England’s so-called Independent Safeguarding Board and promised swift reform, the Church is still talking about “direction of travel” rather than delivering a clear, measurable system of independent safeguarding.

The General Synod never debated Professor Alexis Jay’s recommendations in full. Instead, in February 2025, it was asked to choose between alternative models produced by the Archbishops’ Council. It opted for a short-term version (Model 3) and called for “further work” on the more far-reaching Model 4. That decision may have been defensible — but it was a decision to delay.

Since then, the synod has received an interim report (July 2025) and a further update (February 2026). Yet when the moment came to impose deadlines or require detailed, costed proposals — including legislation and a Code of Practice by July 2027 — amendments to do so were defeated. Instead, the synod simply “endorsed the direction of travel”.

Meanwhile, bishops praised “excellent safeguarding professional colleagues and volunteers”, even as official papers concede that “many survivors do not have trust in the Church of England to properly manage safeguarding matters” and that complaints processes “vary widely” and “undermine trust”.

That contradiction lies at the heart of the crisis. The issue is not whether individuals are hardworking and committed. It is whether the system is structurally independent, consistent and accountable.

Structures alone will not fix this. What is needed are defined functions: a mandatory national complaints pathway, independent scrutiny with real powers, protected professional judgement, and a firm timetable for deciding whether local safeguarding staff will ever be fully independent. The Church has had enough “watershed moments”. It now needs dates, duties and deliverables — not another report about where it might be heading.