I have already written about the substance of the two safeguarding-related questions put to the Presidents of the Archbishops’ Council at General Synod. What now needs addressing is something more troubling: the decision by the Chair of the Question Time session to interrupt and halt an answer that was plainly becoming uncomfortable. I have prepared a transcript of the two questions, which you can download here.

The moment of interruption deserves scrutiny in its own right, because it goes to the heart of accountability, transparency, and how far — or how little — the Church’s national leadership is prepared to permit open examination of its relationship with the Charity Commission.

The ruling — and the reason given

The supplementary question from Sue Lucas was straightforward. She asked whether the expectations the Charity Commission places on trustees — in this case in relation to safeguarding — apply in the same way to Parochial Church Councils as they do to diocesan boards of finance and the Archbishops’ Council.

Canon Alison Coulter began to answer. She said, correctly, that her understanding was that these expectations apply to all trustees, and that the Charity Commission is clear about this in its published guidance. She then added that conversations were ongoing.

At that point, the Chair intervened and ruled the question out of order, stating that it was “a question seeking legal advice”.

The ruling is final. That is not in dispute. But the reason given matters, because it reveals much about the institutional instincts now at play.

Was this really “seeking legal advice”?

On any ordinary understanding, the answer is no.

The question did not ask for a legal opinion on the interpretation of statute. It did not ask how a court would rule, or whether a particular body would be legally liable in a given scenario. It asked whether the Archbishops’ Council understands the Charity Commission’s expectations to apply equally across Church charities.

That is a governance and accountability question, not a request for legal advice. Synod routinely asks — and is routinely answered — questions about legal duties, regulatory frameworks, trustee responsibilities, and compliance obligations. If merely touching on law were enough to render a question out of order, a large proportion of Synod’s safeguarding scrutiny over the past decade would never have been permitted.

Nor does the Standing Orders language support such an expansive prohibition. The relevant clause prevents questions that ask for “an expression of opinion on a question of law”. Sue Lucas’s question did not do that. It asked about institutional understanding and regulatory expectations. Those are not the same thing.

Indeed, Canon Coulter’s partial answer demonstrated precisely how the question could be answered without straying into legal opinion at all.

A ruling that stopped an answer, not a question

What is striking is that the interruption did not come immediately. It came after the answer had begun, and at precisely the point where it was moving beyond safe generalities and towards the reality of the Archbishops’ Council’s engagement with the regulator.

That strongly suggests that the practical effect — if not the formal framing — of the ruling was to stop the answer, not to exclude the question. The ruling functioned as a protective interruption, not an application of a defined Standing Order rule.

I cannot know what prompted the intervention. But anyone familiar with Synod procedure will recognise the pattern: Chairs almost never deploy Standing Orders mid-answer without prompting. In practice, such interventions are usually made on advice from the legal assessor sitting beside the Chair.

In this case, that assessor is a barrister employed by the Archbishops’ Council, Edward Dobson. The Chair himself, Stephen Hofmeyr, is a senior and highly experienced KC, selected by the archbishops as part of the panel of Synod Chairs. That context matters. It does not prove anything improper, but it does raise legitimate questions about institutional reflexes when scrutiny sharpens.

Why this answer, at this moment?

It is worth asking why this particular line of questioning might have been seen as risky.

The Archbishops’ Council is currently under a Regulatory Action Plan imposed by the Charity Commission. One of the Commission’s concerns — expressed not only in relation to the Council, but also in findings concerning dioceses — is that the Church has failed to apply ordinary safeguarding expectations where adults are not assessed as “vulnerable”.

That concern rests squarely on the Commission’s understanding of normal trustee duties. Duties that apply to all charities, religious or otherwise.

Yet in response to Mrs Allotey’s written question, the Archbishops’ Council said that it had written to the Charity Commission seeking a discussion on what changes may be needed. That language is revealing. If expectations are clear and accepted, there is nothing to “seek a discussion” about. You comply.

The obvious inference — and I stress that it is an inference — is that the Council is exploring whether ecclesiastical law, or the Church’s peculiar structures, might justify a different application of charity law duties. In other words, whether Church of England charities can or should be treated differently from other charities when it comes to safeguarding obligations.

That is a weak argument. Charity law does not evaporate at the church door. Trustees are trustees. But it is precisely the sort of argument that becomes awkward if stated plainly in open Synod.

The inconsistency that should worry Synod

This brings us to the earlier exchange with Dr Brendan Biggs.

Asked about the Regulatory Action Plan, Canon Coulter sought to minimise its significance, saying there was “nothing in it that wouldn’t be surprising to Synod” and that it was “all work that you know about”.

That cannot be right.

The Charity Commission does not issue Regulatory Action Plans to ask charities to carry on doing what they are already doing. Such plans are, by definition, corrective. They identify failures, gaps, or deficiencies and require concrete remedial action.

If Synod already “knew about” the work, why had it not been done? If it had been done, why was a Regulatory Action Plan necessary?

Canon Coulter also told Dr Biggs that the Archbishops’ Council “continue[s] to meet and work regularly with the Charity Commission”. Yet, in answer to Mrs Allotey, the Council said it had written seeking a discussion about concerns raised in November 2025 — three months earlier.

That is not what “meeting and working regularly” looks like. It looks like delay.

Why this matters

The interruption of Sue Lucas’s supplementary question matters because it shut down precisely the line of inquiry Synod most needs to pursue: whether the Archbishops’ Council is fully accepting the Charity Commission’s view of trustee duties, or whether it is attempting — quietly and behind closed doors — to negotiate exceptions.

Synod is entitled to know that. Survivors are entitled to know that. The public is entitled to know that.

I am not alleging conspiracy. I am not accusing individuals of bad faith. But patterns of behaviour matter, and so do instincts. When scrutiny tightens, does the institution lean into transparency — or does it reach for procedural shields?

On this occasion, the shield was labelled “seeking legal advice”. It does not withstand serious examination. The Chair’s ruling stands. But the questions it suppressed do not go away.

The post When scrutiny gets silenced: what are they trying to hide? appeared first on Church Abuse.

If you don’t want to read the full 2,450 words, go to the 300-word TL;DR summary

The General Synod meets this week (starting tomorrow) for the first of three scheduled Groups of Sessions this year. It is the penultimate Group of Sessions this quinquennium, with the Synod being prorogued after the July meetings in York.

The November meeting marks the formal start of the next quinquennium: think of the State Opening of Parliament without the pomp, held every five years rather than annually. The King, as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, is expected to deliver a message to mark the formal opening of the new Synod with its newly elected or re-elected members.

The last opening of the Synod took place in November 2021. The current Duke of Edinburgh — then the Earl of Wessex — Prince Edward, stood in for the late Queen Elizabeth II and delivered the message she had written. It was the first time in the Synod’s 51-year history that Queen Elizabeth II missed the opening of a quinquennium. She had been advised to rest by doctors following a brief hospital stay the previous month.

When this quinquennium began, it did so with one of the biggest — if not the biggest — turnovers in membership. Many members, including me, had to get used to Synod processes, procedures and tactics. I say “tactics” because I soon discovered the lengths to which the Archbishops’ Council goes to curtail difficult debate, especially on safeguarding. Combined with a Business Committee that often appears to act as though it were the Archbishops’ Council’s business committee rather than the General Synod’s, the effect has been to blunt Synod members’ attempts to secure safeguarding reform that most people can see is needed.

Parliament says no

I believe that the Church of England is now at the centre of a governance crisis. Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee has ruled the draft National Church Governance Measure not expedient, rejecting the case for a new body that would concentrate more power and provide less accountability than the existing arrangements under the Archbishops’ Council.

We don’t know what MPs and peers made of the draft Measure, because the Ecclesiastical Committee cannot publish its report unless the Synod’s Legislative Committee signifies that it should be presented. Although the Legislative Committee has reported that the Measure was rejected, it has not, as yet, published the underlying report or set out the reasons.

Alongside this, the Charity Commission is finally taking a harder line on the Church of England’s safeguarding failings. Over the past year it has:

• written to Synod members who are also charity trustees, reminding them of their safeguarding duties as trustees;

• written to diocesan bishops — who are Synod members and charity trustees — reminding them of similar duties and asking whether structural impediments prevent them from fulfilling those duties;

• warned the Archbishops’ Council that it must “rapidly accelerate” safeguarding reforms and meet an 18-month expectation, faster than the Council’s stated plans, including in its report to this week’s Synod;

• issued official regulatory warnings to two Diocesan Boards of Finance — Chelmsford and Liverpool — because their trustees (the bishop’s council) failed in their safeguarding governance and trustee duties in relation to allegations concerning the former Bishop of Liverpool, John Perumbalath.

For many years, the Archbishops’ Council has, in my view, relied on obfuscation and — more seriously — dishonest statements. Victims and survivors of church-related abuse have said this for decades. In recent years more campaigners and advocates have added their voices, and they have repeatedly been dismissed.

Now Parliament and the Charity Commission — the statutory regulator — have recognised what is happening and are signalling that poor practice must end.

How do the Archbishops’ Council respond? It defaults to type and continues to obfuscate.

They may get away with this approach with victims, survivors, campaigners and advocates. It won’t work against Parliament and the regulator.

Am I being too hard on the Archbishops’ Council?

A regular feature of General Synod is Question Time. Every Synod member may table up to two questions to several national Church bodies, including the Archbishops’ Council. Written answers are circulated shortly before the Group of Sessions begins, and each substantive question may attract up to two supplementary questions on the floor.

Let us look at two questions, and the written answers, for this Group of Sessions.

Janette Allotey, a lay member from the Diocese of Chester, asked the Presidents of the Archbishops’ Council — the Archbishops of Canterbury and York —this question:

“‘The Commission’s guidance is clear that trustees must take reasonable steps to protect from harm all people who come into contact with their charity.’ In the Regulatory Action Plan of November 2025 issued to the Archbishops’ Council following publication of the Makin Report, the Charity Commission expressed concern that the Church did not treat allegations of abuse from an adult not assessed to be vulnerable as a safeguarding issue. What steps, if any, are being taken to address this criticism?”

“Identifying the issues”

The written response came not from either archbishop but from a lay member of the Archbishops’ Council, Canon Alison Coulter. She wrote: “This is a matter that was also raised in the Charity Commission for England and Wales’s findings in relation to the Dioceses of Chelmsford and Liverpool. Staff of the Council are working to identify the questions, issues and requirements this raises and have written to the Charity Commission seeking a discussion on what changes may be needed. I will keep the Synod informed of progress and any changes required. However, Synod should note carefully the expectations that the Charity Commission has of trustees, of which they have helpfully reminded us.”

So: a Regulatory Action Plan in November, two Official Warnings to Chelmsford and Liverpool, and the Archbishops’ Council’s position is that it has written to the Charity Commission to seek “a discussion” while staff work to “identify the questions, issues and requirements” raised.

This response is extraordinary. The Charity Commission’s “questions, issues, and requirements” are not recent inventions. They reflect the legal duties that apply to every charity trustee.

Those duties are set out in the Charities Act 2011, which largely consolidates earlier charity legislation. The core obligations of trustees did not begin in 2011; they have been part of charity law for many years.

The Archbishops’ Council should already know what the Charity Commission expects of trustees, because those expectations arise from the law.

Perhaps, one might say, the Council is composed of well- meaning people acting in good faith who lack the specialist knowledge to navigate trusteeship. Maybe that is why it has written to the Charity Commission to seek a meeting.

A well-lawyered institution

That explanation does not withstand scrutiny. In July 2022, during my time as a Synod member, I asked how many lawyers the National Church Institutions (NCIs) employed, what they cost, and how many external lawyers they instructed for specific work.

The Secretary General, William Nye, replied that the number of legally qualified staff, and their immediate support staff, rose from 10 in 2017 at a salary cost of £935,078 to 13 in 2021 at a salary cost of £1,483,801.

On external lawyers, Mr Nye said that “the information requested is not readily available and could not be obtained without disproportionate cost.”

A brief aside on that claim. The Archbishops’ Council is a large charity. In 2021, the last year covered by Mr Nye’s figures, the council’s income was £128.09 million and its expenditure was £128.74 million. In 2024, published figures show income of £235.64 million and expenditure of £229.41 million.

An organisation of that scale does not run its finances on handwritten ledgers. It uses an accounting system with structured ledgers and cost centres that should allow external legal spend to be identified without disproportionate cost. On an ordinary reading, that is a basic requirement of financial control.

When Mr Nye said that the information “is not readily available” and could not be obtained without disproportionate cost, one of two things was true. Either the Archbishops’ Council was capable of producing the figure and chose not to disclose it (in which case Mr Nye lied), or it could not readily identify its external legal spend, in which case the trustees were not exercising proper oversight.

That aside illustrates the gap between the Archbishops’ Council’s claims to transparency and what it is prepared to disclose when pressed.

The larger point is that the Council cannot plausibly plead ignorance of trustees’ legal duties or of what the Charity Commission expects. It employs a substantial in-house legal function, and it spends well over £1 million a year on the salaries of legally qualified staff and their support.

Why, then, does the Archbishops’ Council present itself as needing to “identify” the Charity Commission’s “questions, issues and requirements”? Why does it need a meeting to establish what charity trustees are obliged to do?

The Regulatory Action Plan was issued in November last year. The Official Warnings to Chelmsford and Liverpool Diocesan Boards of Finance were issued last month.

These are unusual — and serious — interventions by the regulator, and I doubt they will be the last. Any organisation confronted with this level of scrutiny would normally treat it as a priority: trustees and senior officers would meet, identify the failures, and implement corrective action.

The Charity Commission’s intervention is not a “Lessons Learned Review” commissioned internally and filed away. It is a formal regulatory signal that practice must change. Incidentally, the Church of England no longer uses the “Lessons Learned Reviews” terminology. It now calls them “Safeguarding Practice Reviews” — an implicit acknowledgement, perhaps, that lessons have too often not been learned.

Janette Allotey’s question asked, directly, what steps were being taken to address the Commission’s November criticism. The written answer, as at February, was that staff were still “identifying” issues and seeking a discussion with the regulator. To me, that reads as an admission that the Archbishops’ Council do not have a firm grip on what charity trustees are required to do.

A letter seeking a meeting three months later raises obvious questions. Where is the urgency? Where is the action? Where is the change on the ground?

Another question for this week’s Group of Sessions is equally revealing.

Dr Brendan Biggs, a lay member from the Diocese of Bristol, also directed his question to the Presidents of the Archbishops’ Council. As with Janette Allottey’s question, the written reply came from Canon Alison Coulter.

Dr Biggs referred to the letter that the Charity Commission’s chief executive, David Holdsworth, sent to diocesan bishops in January 2025. It asked whether, after decisions taken by the General Synod in February 2025, there remained any “structural, procedural or constitutional arrangements under ecclesiastical law” that conflicted with, or prevented, bishops and their co-trustees from fulfilling their safeguarding duties as charity trustees (“legal impediments”). Dr Biggs asked whether bishops’ responses had collated centrally, and whether there was a plan to address any legal impediments identified.

Canon Coulter’s response illustrates, again, what I regard as a failure of the Archbishops’ Council — and of Diocesan Boards of Finance — to discharge basic trustee responsibilities.

She wrote: “Some dioceses have shared their responses with the staff of the Archbishops’ Council, but we have not produced a central digest.”

After referring to the Charity Commission’s November 2025 intervention, she added: “We continue to work with the Charity Commission on the Regulatory Action Plan and the Archbishops’ Council is determined to improve practice to fulfil our requirements. We very much hope that dioceses will work in partnership with us.”

That answer sits uneasily with her answer to Janette Allotey. In response to Ms Allottey, Canon Coulter said the Council had written to the Charity Commission to seek a discussion to understand what changes might be needed. Here she says the Council continues “to work with the Charity Commission on the Regulatory Action Plan”.

Which is it?

More seriously, the answer discloses a lack of proactive action. The Charity Commission’s January and February 2025 letters were public. Rather than treat them as a prompt for urgent, coordinated work, the Archbishops’ Council appears to have waited for the regulator to act and is now presenting itself as seeking clarity on what trustees are required to do.

What the Charity Commission expects is neither novel nor obscure. It expects trustees to fulfil their legal duties as trustees.

Instead of waiting, the Archbishops’ Council should have convened the bishops and asked them what “structural, procedural or constitutional arrangements under ecclesiastical law” prevented them from fulfilling safeguarding duties as charity trustees.

There is an obvious mechanism for doing that. The House of Bishops meets regularly, and this issue could, and should, have been on its agenda throughout the past year.

The General Synod has limited powers to initiate legislation. In practice, that is the preserve of the Archbishops’ Council. If “structural, procedural or constitutional arrangements under ecclesiastical law” must change to enable trustees of Church of England charities — including Diocesan Boards of Finance — to fulfil safeguarding duties, the Archbishops’ Council is the body that must bring forward the necessary legislation.

Independent charities — selectively

The Archbishops’ Council has often said that Diocesan Boards of Finance are independent charities and that it cannot require them to take particular action. The line that dioceses and DBFs are separate, independent charities has become a limiting principle: the Council does not, on that account, instruct, compel, or enforce outcomes, but relies on persuasion, encouragement, or legislative change.

Yet the Council invokes this principle selectively. In the second Past Cases Review (PCR2), dioceses were instructed on which files to review, the qualifications required of the reviewers, the actions expected of diocesan safeguarding teams, the timescale, the content of diocesan summary reports, and the manner of publication.

When asked to produce a report collating the recommendations made by reviewers across dioceses, the answer was that the Archbishops’ Council could not do this because the data belonged to those independent charities (the bishops’ councils).

This “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach is not legally defensible. Call it what you will — institutional blindness, deliberate ignorance, turning a blind eye, plausible deniability, or failure of oversight — the practical effect is the same: avoidance of responsibility and avoidance of scrutiny.

By failing to ask the questions that trustees ought to know must be asked, and by failing to require the information needed to discharge their duties, the Archbishops’ Council displays the same pattern that public inquiries have criticised elsewhere. In the criminal courts, directors who operate in this way may face exposure to corporate manslaughter investigations, health and safety prosecutions, and professional sanctions.

It is no longer good enough for the Archbishops’ Council to sit back and wait, suggesting that delay reflects a need for “clarity” from the Charity Commission. It must act — not because I demand it, and not only because the Charity Commission demands it, but because charity law requires trustees to act.

TL;DR — Synod questions expose a governance blind spot

Two questions at this week’s General Synod expose a deeper problem at the heart of the Church of England’s governance: how members of the Archbishops’ Council understand — or evade — their responsibilities as charity trustees.

In November, the Charity Commission issued a Regulatory Action Plan to the Archbishops’ Council following the Makin Report. It criticised the Church for failing to treat allegations of abuse from adults not assessed as vulnerable as safeguarding matters. Since then, the Commission has issued Official Warnings to two Diocesan Boards of Finance and written directly to bishops and Synod members reminding them of their legal duties as trustees.

Against that backdrop, Janette Allotey asked a simple question: what steps are being taken to address the Commission’s criticism?

The written answer was striking. The Archbishops’ Council said staff were still “identifying the questions, issues and requirements” raised by the regulator and had written to the Charity Commission to seek a discussion about what changes might be needed.

But the Charity Commission’s expectations are not new or unclear. They are rooted in long-established charity law. Trustees are required to act in the best interests of their charities and to protect people from harm. Those duties do not begin with correspondence from the regulator.

A second question reinforced the same picture. Asked whether bishops’ responses to the Commission’s letter about possible “legal impediments” had been collated centrally, the answer was no.

Together, these replies reveal a pattern of delay and deflection. Despite employing a substantial in-house legal team and spending well over £1 million a year on legally qualified staff, the Archbishops’ Council presents itself as needing “clarity” on what trustees are required to do.

That stance might once have gone unchallenged. With Parliament and the Charity Commission now watching closely, it no longer will.

The post When the regulator comes knocking, the Archbishops’ Council puts on the blinkers appeared first on Church Abuse.

I have just published a new detailed briefing, critically examining the Archbishops’ Council’s latest proposals for independent safeguarding in the Church of England.

The briefing document, written for Synod members, MPs, trustees, and all those concerned with safeguarding reform, sets out why the latest proposals, to be debated by the General Synod later this month, fall far short of what is needed.

The briefing explains that, despite years of promises and external scrutiny, the Church’s new safeguarding plans do not deliver genuine independence. Instead, they propose a slow, staged approach that keeps real control within existing Church structures for years to come. The analysis highlights how this approach fails to meet the expectations of victims and survivors, the requirements set out by the Charity Commission, and the calls for urgent action from General Synod and Parliament.

Key sections of the briefing cover the collapse of the Independent Safeguarding Board, the findings of the Jay Review, and the recent intervention by the Charity Commission. It argues that the Church’s current direction represents a retreat from previous commitments and risks further eroding trust among survivors and the wider public.

The document also challenges the claim that all IICSA recommendations have been delivered, pointing out that true independence in safeguarding remains undelivered.

The briefing concludes with a call for Synod and Parliament to reject the current proposals and instead demand a credible, accelerated route to statutory independent safeguarding, with robust interim measures in place.

It also offers a suggested amendment for Synod members to use, ensuring that reform is not delayed any further.

For anyone interested in the future of safeguarding in the Church of England, this briefing provides a clear, evidence-based summary of why urgent, decisive action is needed now.

You can download it here [PDF].

The post Delay and control: the problems with the Archbishops’ Council’s safeguarding plans appeared first on Church Abuse.

If you don’t want to read the full 1,400 words, go to the 300-word TL;DR summary

See also: When “No Case To Answer” means no accountability: Why the Tudor decision exposes a safeguarding system beyond repair

See also: Authority invoked, lessons avoided: what the Archbishop of York’s statement still fails to confront

See also: Archbishop Stephen Cottrell says he has been cleared — but the Tudor case is still under review

And if you want a good reminder of the case, listen to BBC Radio’s original File on Four investigation

Yesterday’s blog examined why the “no case to answer” decision in the David Tudor case is unsustainable. This supplement takes a different but equally important approach. It examines the Archbishop of York’s own words, as recorded in his response to the complaint, and measures them against four benchmarks:

1. good safeguarding practice and process;
2. his public statements to the media;
3. the duties imposed on charity trustees by law; and
4. the Church of England’s own safeguarding policies.

The difficulty is not tone, sincerity, or intention. It is process, evidence, and accountability.

Memory is not safeguarding: why records matter

In his response to the complaint, the Archbishop accepts overall responsibility for decisions affecting David Tudor but says that he has “no actual memory” of the processes by which Tudor was reappointed as Area Dean. He then adds that he is “sure” he would remember if safeguarding professionals had questioned the propriety of those reappointments — and that they did not.

This is not a minor point. It goes to the heart of safeguarding governance.

Safeguarding systems do not rely on personal recall. They rely on records. Where a known abuser is subject to ongoing restrictions; where risk is said to be “managed well”; and where decisions are taken to extend responsibility, authority, or visibility, safeguarding standards require a clear, contemporaneous documentary trail. That trail should include:

• written advice from safeguarding professionals;
  
• minutes or notes of meetings where risk and role suitability were discussed;
  
• documented consideration of alternatives and mitigations;
  
• explicit recording of victim and survivor impact; and
  
• a reasoned, recorded justification for the final decision taken.

These records are not optional, and they are not kept for their own sake. They exist precisely so that, when decisions later come under scrutiny, the organisation can demonstrate how safeguarding judgments were made, what information was considered, and why particular risks were judged acceptable or unacceptable.

The Archbishop repeatedly emphasises that Tudor’s risks were being “managed well”, with regular oversight and professional involvement. If that is correct, then robust records must exist. If they exist, they should have been used, cited, and relied upon in responding to the complaint and in reviewing safeguarding actions. A review that looks past records and instead relies on a failure of memory is not a meaningful review at all.

If such records existed but were not used, that raises serious governance questions. It suggests that record-keeping is treated as a compliance exercise rather than as a tool for accountability and learning. Records that are not used to inform review and scrutiny serve no safeguarding purpose.

If, on the other hand, those records did not exist, then the claim that risk was “managed well” is unsustainable. Risk management that cannot be evidenced is not risk management; it is assertion.

Either way, reliance on “I’m sure I would remember” falls far short of what safeguarding policy expects. It reduces safeguarding to personal confidence rather than demonstrable process — exactly the failure mode that safeguarding frameworks are designed to prevent.

The “I can’t remember” defence in law and public accountability

This problem is not unique to the Church of England. Courts and statutory inquiries have grappled repeatedly with the question of what weight can be given to an office-holder’s inability to remember key decisions.

The consistent legal and public-law position is clear: an inability to remember does not absolve responsibility, particularly where the individual held a senior role and where proper records should have existed.

In the UK Supreme Court and Court of Appeal, cases involving historic wrongdoing, institutional failure, or public authority decision-making regularly emphasise that responsibility does not depend on personal recollection. Courts look instead to contemporaneous documentation, established processes, and what ought reasonably to have been recorded. Where records are missing, that absence itself can support adverse inferences about governance and control.

The same principle is repeatedly applied in Independent Statutory Public Inquiries. From child abuse inquiries to major public disasters, inquiry chairs have consistently rejected “I can’t remember” as an adequate answer where the witness was responsible for systems, policies, or decisions. The expectation is not perfect recall; it is that proper records exist and can be examined. Where they do not, that absence is treated as a failure of governance.

Inquiries have also been explicit that senior leaders cannot rely on memory loss while simultaneously asserting that systems were robust and risks well managed. Those two positions are logically incompatible. Either the system was robust — in which case it should have produced records capable of scrutiny — or it was not.

Against that backdrop, the Archbishop’s reliance on lack of memory, coupled with personal assurance (“I am sure I would remember”), is not a neutral evidential position. It is a red flag. It indicates a safeguarding system that cannot demonstrate its own workings when challenged.

Administrative convenience over safeguarding priority

The Archbishop explains that he was reluctant to reappoint Tudor as Area Dean but did so because he was told that there was nobody suitable to replace him. That explanation is treated as mitigating context, but it is troubling when measured against safeguarding norms.

Area Dean is not a marginal role. It carries authority, influence, and symbolic weight. Where a known abuser is involved, safeguarding best practice requires positive justification for extending responsibility — not merely an explanation of difficulty.

Good safeguarding governance would expect to see a documented options appraisal: who else was considered, what interim arrangements were explored, whether the role could be left vacant, whether duties could be redistributed, and why each alternative was rejected. It would also expect explicit consideration of the safeguarding and trauma impact of maintaining a known abuser in a senior position.

Without such evidence, the explanation reads as administrative convenience taking precedence over safeguarding priority. That is precisely the cultural failure safeguarding regimes are designed to counteract.

“We knew he shouldn’t have been allowed back”

One of the most significant statements attributed to the Archbishop is this: “We knew he shouldn’t have been allowed back into ministry, but since he had been, and we couldn’t remove him, we were working hard… to manage and minimise the risk.”

This is an extraordinary admission. It acknowledges that Tudor’s presence in ministry was itself recognised as wrong, yet treats that recognition as a fixed constraint rather than a trigger for escalation.

Safeguarding leadership is not about accommodating acknowledged failure. It is about challenging systems that perpetuate risk. Managing risk while accepting that someone should not be in ministry is not safeguarding; it is containment.

This sits uneasily with the Archbishop’s public statements at the time, in which he insisted that “everything was done” to manage risk, that Tudor was not ignored or protected, and that action was taken as soon as legally possible. Those assurances demand evidential backing. Without records showing how victim impact was assessed and prioritised, they cannot be substantiated.

Charity trustee duties and structural neglect

As a diocesan bishop and later Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell was a charity trustee, subject to legal duties to act where he knew of serious risk to beneficiaries and of systemic governance weaknesses.

His own words show that he knew bishops lacked effective powers to remove clergy in high-risk safeguarding situations. That was not theoretical; it constrained his actions directly. Under charity law, identifying such a defect is not the end of the matter. Trustees are required to take reasonable steps to remedy known structural risks, including escalation and reform.

Instead, the inability to remove became an explanation rather than a problem to be solved. The status quo was accepted, even as its consequences were acknowledged. That is what neglect looks like in governance terms: not bad faith, but failure to act on known, ongoing risk.

The contrast with Hindley

The later case of Andrew Hindley at Blackburn Cathedral demonstrates that such paralysis was not inevitable. When safeguarding risk was treated as intolerable, the Church was prepared to contemplate radical structural options to bring the situation to an end. The lesson is not that a neat statutory power existed, but that senior leaders knew the system was not powerless when the will to act was present.

Policy versus practice

The Church of England’s safeguarding policies emphasise victim-centred practice, defensible decision-making, transparency, and accountability. Measured against those standards, the Archbishop’s own account reveals repeated gaps: reliance on memory rather than records; administrative convenience outweighing safeguarding priority; public assurances unsupported by evidence; and acceptance of structural incapacity without meaningful challenge.

None of this requires an allegation of bad faith. But safeguarding is not judged by intention. It is judged by process, evidence, and outcomes. Using the Archbishop’s own words, the conclusion is unavoidable: the actions described are not defensible when measured against safeguarding best practice, public assurances, charity trustee duties, and the Church of England’s own standards. That is why accountability cannot end with “no case to answer”.

• This post was amended on 31 January 2026 to correct the name of Andrew Hindley

TL;DR — Why the Archbishop’s own words matter

The latest decision in the David Tudor case concluded there was “no case to answer” in relation to the Archbishop of York’s handling of safeguarding concerns. This follow-up examines the Archbishop’s own recorded words — and finds that they do not withstand scrutiny when measured against safeguarding standards, charity-law duties, and the Church of England’s own policies.

In his response to the complaint, the Archbishop accepts overall responsibility but says he has “no actual memory” of key decisions, relying instead on personal assurance that he would remember if safeguarding professionals had raised concerns. That is not a safeguarding answer. Safeguarding depends on records, not recall. Where risk is said to have been “managed well”, there should be clear documentary evidence showing how decisions were made, what advice was given, what alternatives were considered, and how victim impact was weighed. If such records exist but were not used, both the records and the review process are deficient. If they do not exist, claims of good risk management cannot be sustained.

The Archbishop also explains that a known abuser was reappointed to a senior role because there was “nobody suitable” to replace him. Safeguarding practice requires positive justification for extending authority and status — not administrative convenience. There is no evidence of a documented options appraisal or of victim-centred decision-making.

Most strikingly, the Archbishop acknowledges that the individual “shouldn’t have been allowed back into ministry”, yet frames safeguarding as managing risk within that reality rather than challenging the system that allowed it. That sits uneasily with public statements insisting that “everything was done”.

As a charity trustee, the Archbishop had a legal duty to act on known, systemic safeguarding risks — including defects in the Church’s powers to remove clergy. Accepting those defects without meaningful challenge is neglect, not inevitability.

Using the Archbishop’s own words, the conclusion is unavoidable: the actions described are not defensible by safeguarding, governance, or legal standards. Accountability cannot end with “no case to answer”.

The post Stephen Cottrell’s own words — and why they fail basic safeguarding and legal tests appeared first on Church Abuse.

If you don’t want to read the full 1,500 words, go to the 479-word TL;DR summary

See also: Stephen Cottrell’s own words — and why they fail basic safeguarding and legal tests

See also: Authority invoked, lessons avoided: what the Archbishop of York’s statement still fails to confront

See also: Archbishop Stephen Cottrell says he has been cleared — but the Tudor case is still under review

And if you want a good reminder of the case, listen to BBC Radio’s original File on Four investigation

The decision by the President of Clergy Discipline Tribunals to dismiss the complaint concerning the Archbishop of York’s handling of the David Tudor case is not simply unpersuasive. Read carefully, it is unsustainable on the evidence, inconsistent with ordinary judicial reasoning, and fundamentally misaligned with contemporary safeguarding and charity-law standards.

This is not a matter of hindsight, nor of personal animus. It is about governance, accountability, and whether the Church of England’s disciplinary system is capable of responding credibly when safeguarding failures involve senior leaders.

On the evidence, it is not.

A threshold test quietly rewritten

Under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, the President of Tribunals must decide whether there is a case to answer. That is a gateway test. Its purpose is to filter out complaints that are frivolous, vexatious, or incapable of amounting to misconduct even if proved — not to determine the merits of contested safeguarding judgments.

Yet in this case the President reformulated the test. He stated that a matter should proceed only if there were a “real prospect”, taking the case at its highest, that a tribunal would find misconduct.

That formulation does not appear in the Measure or in the Clergy Discipline Rules (made by Statutory Instrument). No authority is cited for importing it. And its practical effect is decisive: it allows the President to weigh evidence, assess credibility, and determine reasonableness at the very stage designed to avoid that exercise.

Having raised the bar, the decision repeatedly acknowledges that:

• serious mistakes were made,
• decisions were “regrettable”,
• and the Archbishop “could and should have been more curious”.

Yet it concludes that no tribunal could reasonably find misconduct.

That is not neutral gatekeeping. It is a merits decision, taken by a single office-holder, without the testing, transparency, or adversarial scrutiny that a tribunal exists to provide.

Good faith treated as a shield against accountability

A central strand of the reasoning is that the Archbishop acted “in good faith”, relied on safeguarding advice, and was dealing with an “inherited situation”.

All of that may be true. None of it answers the charge.

In ordinary judicial, regulatory, and safeguarding contexts, good faith does not negate neglect. Senior office-holders are routinely found culpable where they:

• know of a serious risk,
• have authority or influence to mitigate it,
• but fail to act reasonably in light of that knowledge.

Misconduct under the Clergy Discipline Measure expressly includes “neglect or inefficiency in the performance of office”, a statutory definition the President expressly acknowledges, but then undermines in practice by treating good faith as effectively dispositive rather than as one factor to be weighed.

That is not how safeguarding accountability works in the NHS, education, charities, or regulated professions. It should not be how it works here.

Managed risk is not the same as suitability for authority or honour

The most serious flaw in the decision lies in its treatment of status and power.

The President accepts that the safeguarding restrictions imposed on David Tudor were so significant that they demonstrated he was not suitable to minister as an ordinary parish priest. Yet he simultaneously concludes that appointing and reappointing him as Area Dean, and conferring an honorary canonry, could not amount to misconduct because those steps were taken in accordance with policy and safeguarding advice.

That reasoning is incompatible with safeguarding reality.

Safeguarding agreements manage known risk. They do not confer endorsement. They do not render a person suitable for senior roles. And they do not neutralise the safeguarding significance of authority, visibility, and institutional honour.

Senior diocesan offices and honorary canonries are not administratively neutral. They signal trust. They enhance credibility. They expand access and influence. In safeguarding terms, they are risk amplifiers, not incidental decorations.

The assertion that any risk arose solely from Tudor’s parish role — and not from these additional offices — is not a finding grounded in evidence. It is an assumption, and an implausible one.

Speculation substituted for professional curiosity

The decision concedes that a civil settlement in 2012 ought to have prompted greater curiosity, because it suggested the possibility of additional victims.

That concession should have been decisive. Instead, it is neutralised by speculation: the President reasons that if Tudor had been asked further questions, he would likely have denied further offending, and therefore nothing would have changed.

That is not judicial reasoning; it is conjecture.

Safeguarding practice does not excuse a failure to inquire on the basis that the answers might be unhelpful. The duty is to ask, to reassess risk, and to strengthen safeguards when new information emerges — not to assume the outcome in advance.

“Independent judge” — but not institutionally independent

In his separate decision concerning publication, the President described himself as an “independent judge”.

That description is, at best, incomplete.

The President of Clergy Discipline Tribunals is paid by the Archbishops’ Council. The Archbishop of York is not a peripheral figure in that body: he is its chair and president.

This is not an allegation of bad faith. It is a statement of structural conflict of interest. In any other safeguarding or regulatory system, the appearance of independence would be regarded as compromised where a decision-maker is funded by, and institutionally connected to, the leadership of the organisation whose conduct is under scrutiny.

Independence is not only about personal integrity. It is about structure.

Charity law, trustee duties, and neglect of a known structural risk

As Bishop of Chelmsford and later Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell occupied roles carrying not only episcopal responsibility but formal charity trustee duties.

He was — and remains — a member of the House of Bishops by virtue of both offices. The members of the House of Bishops are collectively at the heart of safeguarding policy, legislative reform, and governance oversight.

In addition, by virtue of his office as Archbishop of York, he became not only a member, but also the chair and president of the Archbishops’ Council. The Council is the Church’s principal executive charity body. It is responsible for proposing legislation, coordinating safeguarding policy, and bringing draft Measures to the General Synod.

Recent correspondence from the Charity Commission to General Synod members and diocesan bishops make those trustee expectations explicit.

Trustees must not merely respond to individual incidents. They must act where they know of systemic or structural risks that expose beneficiaries to harm.

The David Tudor case revealed exactly such a structural risk. The Archbishop repeatedly relied on the assertion that he had no legal power to remove or suspend a priest in circumstances where serious safeguarding risk was known and accepted.

That difficulty was not theoretical. It affected him directly. It constrained his own decision-making. And it shaped the outcomes in this case.

Crucially, that meant he also knew — or ought to have known — that every other diocesan bishop was subject to the same incapacity in comparable circumstances.

In charity-law terms, this is the decisive point. A trustee who becomes aware of a governance or legal defect that prevents a charity from protecting beneficiaries is expected to take reasonable and proportionate steps to remedy that defect, not merely to accommodate it.

Those steps include escalation, reform, and — where necessary — legislative change.

As a member of the House of Bishops and chair and president of the Archbishops’ Council, Stephen Cottrell was uniquely positioned to act. He could have pressed for, and required the initiation of, draft legislation to be brought before the General Synod to address the inability to remove or suspend clergy in high-risk safeguarding cases. He could have insisted that the structural weakness exposed by the Tudor case be remedied for the whole Church.

He did not.

The likely defences are predictable: that legislation takes time; that responsibility is collective; that safeguarding reform is complex. None withstand scrutiny. Trustees are not required to guarantee outcomes, but they are required to take reasonable steps when serious risks are known. Here, the risk was known, personal, systemic, and ongoing — and the status quo was accepted.

Measured against Charity Commission expectations, that is neglect of trustee duty: knowledge of a serious safeguarding risk combined with a failure to take reasonable steps to eliminate or mitigate it.

A disciplinary system not fit for purpose — and not fixed by reform

This case exposes a deeper truth. The Clergy Discipline system is not fit for purpose in serious safeguarding cases.

Threshold decisions are opaque. Power is concentrated in a single office. Conflicts of interest are structural. And senior leaders are effectively insulated from scrutiny by design.

Nor will this be cured by the proposed Clergy Conduct Measure. Despite changes in language, the critical architecture remains: a powerful president, a high gateway threshold, and limited transparency. In cases like this, the “tribunal” is largely theoretical.

Two unavoidable conclusions

Two conclusions follow inexorably.

First, the Clergy Discipline system — and its proposed replacement — cannot deliver credible accountability in serious safeguarding cases. It is structurally flawed and institutionally defensive.

Second, the position of the Archbishop of York is untenable. Not because of malice or bad faith, but because he presided over — and failed to correct — a system that placed institutional continuity above safeguarding integrity.

Leadership requires more than regret. It requires responsibility.

In this case, responsibility now requires resignation.

TL;DR — Why the Tudor decision matters

A senior Church of England disciplinary decision has concluded that there was “no case to answer” in relation to the Archbishop of York’s handling of the David Tudor safeguarding case. That conclusion does not withstand scrutiny.

The President of Clergy Discipline Tribunals rewrote the legal threshold he was required to apply. Instead of asking whether there was a case to answer — the statutory test in the Clergy Discipline Measure — he applied a stricter, invented standard: whether there was a “real prospect” that a tribunal would ultimately find misconduct. That test appears in neither the Measure nor the Clergy Discipline Rules. It allowed him to decide the merits himself, at the gateway stage, without a tribunal ever hearing the case.

The decision repeatedly acknowledges serious failings: that mistakes were made, that decisions were “regrettable”, and that the Archbishop “could and should have been more curious” when new information suggested the possibility of further victims. Yet it then treats “good faith” as effectively dispositive — a near-complete defence — despite the fact that misconduct under the Measure expressly includes neglect or inefficiency in the performance of office. In safeguarding and regulatory contexts, good faith does not cancel neglect.

Most troubling is the treatment of power and status. The decision accepts that safeguarding restrictions on Tudor were so serious that he was not suitable for normal parish ministry — yet concludes that appointing and reappointing him to senior diocesan roles, and conferring an honorary canonry, could not amount to misconduct.

That reasoning ignores a basic safeguarding principle: status, authority, and honour increase trust and influence, and therefore increase risk. Managed risk is not the same as suitability for leadership.

The President also describes himself as an “independent judge”, but the office is funded through the Archbishops’ Council, which is chaired and presided over by the Archbishop of York. That is not an allegation of bad faith, but it is a clear structural conflict of interest that would be unacceptable in most safeguarding or regulatory systems.

Finally, the case exposes a deeper governance failure. As Bishop of Chelmsford and later Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell knew that bishops lacked effective legal powers to remove clergy in high-risk safeguarding cases. That problem affected him directly. It also affected every other bishop. As a senior charity trustee and chair of the Church’s main executive body, he was in a position to press for legislative reform to fix that defect. He did not. Under Charity Commission standards, knowingly accepting a serious, systemic safeguarding risk without taking reasonable steps to remedy it amounts to neglect of trustee duty.

Two conclusions follow. First, the Church’s disciplinary system is not fit for purpose in serious safeguarding cases — and proposed reforms will not fix that. Second, the position of the Archbishop of York is untenable. Not because of malice, but because accountability, safeguarding credibility, and public trust now require responsibility to be taken.

The post When “No Case To Answer” means no accountability: Why the Tudor decision exposes a safeguarding system beyond repair appeared first on Church Abuse.

The Archbishops’ Council’s latest safeguarding paper to the General Synod is not merely inadequate. It is offensive.

Offensive not because it is clumsily written, or because it lacks polish, or even because it is complacent in tone. It is offensive because it has been produced, approved, and circulated as if the last six months had not happened at all.

The paper, a GS Misc report authored by the Council’s Director of Safeguarding, Alexander Kubeyinje, and dated “February 2026”, is not due to be debated. It is not scheduled for discussion. It will simply be placed before Synod and noted. And it offers a breezy account of progress, improvement, and confidence in direction at precisely the moment when confidence has collapsed.

That dissonance is not accidental. It is institutional.

Since the last meeting of General Synod, the Charity Commission has issued a formal rebuke to the Archbishops’ Council itself and official warnings to two Church of England charities. Those warnings are unprecedented in the modern history of the Church. They are not misunderstandings. They are regulatory findings of mismanagement in safeguarding.

In the same period, it emerged that an abuse survivor, known publicly as “N”, had a complaint about the Bishop of London improperly set aside by Archbishops’ Council staff, in direct contravention of the Church’s own safeguarding rules, requiring the matter to be reopened. That is not historic failure. That is recent practice.

At the same time, Parliament has rejected the draft Clergy Conduct Measure, citing fundamental concerns about secrecy, lack of transparency, and the inability to assess safeguarding consequences. Questions are now being asked in Parliament about whether the Archbishops’ Council is capable of handling safeguarding at all.

And yet, the Director of Safeguarding reports to Synod with a paper that reads as if none of this exists.

So the question must be asked plainly: is this institutional blindness? Or is it institutional contempt?

A report that gaslights survivors

Safeguarding reports are not neutral documents. They do not land in a vacuum. They are read by survivors, by victims, by advocates, by campaigners, and by those still trapped in Church processes. To write, at this moment, a report that foregrounds how well things are going is not merely tone-deaf. It is actively harmful.

It tells survivors that what they have experienced does not matter. It tells them that regulatory findings of failure are footnotes. It tells them that Parliament’s rejection of Church legislation is an inconvenience, not a warning.

If this is the best the Archbishops’ Council can produce after the last year, then the problem is not communications. It is governance.

The Director of Safeguarding may be the author, but this document did not emerge unexamined. It would have been read by senior staff. It would have been cleared. It would have been authorised for circulation. And that means it passed across the desk of the Secretary General, William Nye.

William Nye is not a bystander in this. He is not a junior official. He is the chief executive of the Archbishops’ Council and the secretary to its trustees. He understands governance. He understands regulatory risk. He understands, better than most, how this paper would be received by survivors and by the wider public if they were aware of it.

Which raises an unavoidable question: how did this paper come to be approved?

Blindness, cynicism, or something worse?

There are only three plausible explanations.

The first is that the Director of Safeguarding is so institutionally embedded that he is genuinely unable to see the scale of failure around him. That would be alarming in itself.

The second is that the Archbishops’ Council as a whole is institutionally blind: so insulated from consequence that regulatory warnings, reopened complaints, and parliamentary rejection barely register.

The third is more troubling still: that this paper is a deliberate act of defiance. A not-very-subtle message to Synod that says, in effect: things are bad; we know they are bad; you know they are bad; we know that you know they are bad — and we are going to carry on as if nothing is wrong.

If that is the case, then this is not incompetence. It is contempt.

And if the Secretary General knowingly allowed this paper to go forward, then responsibility rests with him as much as with its author.

Throwing someone under the bus?

There is another possibility, which should trouble Synod deeply.

Is this paper designed to fail?

Is the Alexander Kubeyinje being positioned as the public face of a narrative that senior leadership knows is indefensible — a convenient figure to be sacrificed when the backlash inevitably comes? That would be a familiar pattern: responsibility pushed downwards, accountability retained upwards.

If that is what is happening, it is cynical in the extreme. And if it is not, then the alternative is no less damning: that senior leadership genuinely believed this report was appropriate.

Either way, it speaks to a catastrophic failure of judgment at the centre of the Church.

Where are the trustees?

The Archbishops’ Council is a charity. Its members are trustees with individual legal duties: duties to act prudently, to avoid harm, and to ensure that the charity does not mislead those it affects.

So trustees must now ask themselves some very direct questions.

Did they know that the Director of Safeguarding intended to present such a report to Synod at this moment?

Did they know that the Secretary General would approve its circulation?

Did they consider the risk of harm to victims and survivors from a paper that presents a falsely reassuring picture?

And if they did not know — why not?

Trustees cannot hide behind process. Regulatory warnings have already made clear that passive governance is not acceptable. Silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.

Time for resignations

At this point, calls for “learning lessons” are an insult.

If a safeguarding director can produce a report this detached from reality, then he should not remain in post. If a Secretary General can approve its distribution in the aftermath of regulatory rebuke and parliamentary rejection, then he should not remain in post either.

This is not about punishment. It is about credibility.

Safeguarding cannot be led by people who are unable — or unwilling — to acknowledge failure when it is staring them in the face. It cannot be overseen by governance structures that respond to crisis with denial.

Resignations, or dismissals, are not acts of aggression. They are acknowledgements that leadership has failed and that trust has been broken.

Synod should not let this pass

General Synod should not allow this paper to be “noted” and forgotten. Members should ask why it was written, why it was approved, and why it bears so little relation to reality.

And the wider Church should ask a harder question still: if this is what the Archbishops’ Council is willing to say to its own Synod, what does it say behind closed doors?

Because one thing is now painfully clear.

The problem is not that the Church does not know how bad things are.

The problem is that those in charge appear determined to behave as if it does not matter.

The post General Synod safeguarding report: a report written as if nothing has happened appeared first on Church Abuse.

The Charity Commission’s Official Warnings to the dioceses of Liverpool and Chelmsford are unprecedented. For the first time, the statutory regulator has formally concluded that diocesan trustees committed mismanagement in their handling of safeguarding allegations. The findings are stark: trustees failed to investigate, failed to report, failed to ensure oversight, and failed to protect people who came into contact with their charities.

Given the seriousness of these conclusions, one might expect the diocesan responses to reflect a moment of reckoning. Instead, the statements issued by Liverpool and Chelmsford follow a familiar pattern – one that victims, survivors, advocates, and independent reviewers have been pointing out for decades. The words change slightly, the tone softens or hardens depending on the moment, but the underlying message remains the same: we are sorry, we disagree, we are learning, we are improving, trust us.

The Charity Commission has now said plainly what survivors have been saying for years: the Church’s safeguarding structures are inadequate. Yet the diocesan responses show that the institution still cannot hear it.

Chelmsford: “We respectfully disagree”

The Diocese of Chelmsford’s statement acknowledges the Commission’s warning but immediately distances itself from the findings. The diocese says it “respectfully disagrees with some of the conclusions,” particularly around trustee oversight. This is striking, because the Commission’s warning is explicit: trustees failed to consider or investigate a safeguarding complaint, failed to follow guidance, and failed to report a serious incident for two years.

Chelmsford’s response mirrors a long‑standing Church of England reflex: when confronted with external scrutiny, the instinct is to defend the institution rather than confront the failure. Survivors have heard this before – from the Elliott Review, the Gibb Report, the Makin Review, IICSA, and countless diocesan reviews. Each time, the Church expresses sorrow, but then qualifies, reframes, or disputes the findings.

The Commission is not a hostile campaigner. It is the statutory regulator. If even now the Church cannot accept its conclusions without caveat, what hope is there for genuine reform?

Liverpool: “We have already made changes” – but where?

Liverpool’s response, delivered through a written statement and a video message from the Interim Bishop and Diocesan Secretary, is more apologetic in tone. They “accept the findings,” they are “really sorry,” and they speak of “continuous learning” and “greater accountability.”

But then comes the familiar pivot: reassurance that “many changes have already been made.”

This is where the words and the reality diverge.

The Charity Commission’s findings in relation to relate to events in 2023 and 2025 – not ancient history, not decades‑old cases, but failures that occurred last year. If Liverpool had made significant safeguarding changes in the past 12 months, they would be visible in their public communications.

Yet a review of the diocese’s own website tells a different story:

• No major safeguarding reforms have been announced in the past year.
  
  
• The only safeguarding‑related posts are routine updates: staff changes, annual reports, and general reminders about best practice.
  
  
• There is no evidence of structural reform, new reporting mechanisms, trustee training initiatives, or governance changes that would address the Commission’s concerns.
  
  
• The diocese’s Synod reports focus on national debates, not local safeguarding improvements.
  
  

In other words, the “changes” Liverpool claims to have made are not visible in the public record. This is not to say nothing has happened internally – but when a regulator finds mismanagement, transparency is not optional. If the diocese wants to rebuild trust, it must show – not merely assert – that reform is underway.

The familiar pattern: Apologies without accountability

Both diocesan responses follow a script the Church of England has used for years:

1. Express sorrow
   
   
2. Acknowledge the seriousness
   
   
3. Disagree with or contextualise the findings
   
   
4. Assure the public that improvements are underway
   
   
5. Reaffirm commitment to safeguarding
   
   

What is missing – every time – is accountability.

No trustee resignations.
No structural overhaul.
No acceptance that the system itself is broken.
No recognition that survivors have been right all along.

The Charity Commission has now said what survivors have been saying for decades: the Church’s safeguarding processes are inadequate, its governance structures are flawed, and its culture prevents proper oversight.

Yet the diocesan responses still treat safeguarding failures as unfortunate lapses rather than symptoms of a system that cannot be fixed from within.

Why this matters: Trustees cannot hide behind bishops and the NST

One of the most important elements of the Charity Commission’s warnings is the clear statement that trustees are legally responsible for safeguarding. They cannot delegate that responsibility to bishops, archbishops, the Archbishops’ Council, or the National Safeguarding Team.

For years, diocesan trustees have been told – implicitly or explicitly – that safeguarding is “handled elsewhere.” The Commission has now made it clear that this is not acceptable. Trustees who fail to demand information, fail to challenge bishops, or fail to ensure proper reporting may face personal regulatory consequences.

The diocesan responses do not grapple with this reality. They speak of learning and improvement, but not of the profound shift in governance that the Commission’s findings require.

The unavoidable conclusion: Safeguarding must be independent

The Charity Commission’s warnings confirm what survivors, campaigners, and independent reviewers have been saying for years: the Church of England cannot police itself. Its safeguarding structures are too fragmented, too hierarchical, too secretive, and too compromised by conflicts of interest.

The diocesan responses – carefully worded, defensive in places, and lacking evidence of real change – only reinforce this point.

If safeguarding is to be credible, it must be independent, statutory, and external to the Church.

Fine words  are no longer enough. The regulator has spoken. The Church must now act.

The post Fine words, no change: What the diocesan responses to the Charity Commission really reveal appeared first on Church Abuse.

The Charity Commission’s Official Warnings to the Liverpool and Chelmsford Diocesan Boards of Finance – the legal bodies that make up the Church of England in those areas – mark a moment of profound significance for the Church of England. For the first time, as far as I am aware, the regulator has concluded that Church bodies committed mismanagement in their handling of safeguarding concerns – this time relating to allegations against the former Bishop of Liverpool, Dr John Perumbalath.

These warnings are not technicalities. They expose deep structural weaknesses in the Church’s safeguarding culture, governance, and leadership. And they raise unavoidable questions about the role of the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, who – through his positions as Metropolitan, Chair of the Archbishops’ Council, and Chair of the House of Bishops – has had unparalleled responsibility for driving safeguarding reform.

What the Charity Commission found

The Commission’s warnings to Liverpool and Chelmsford identify clear governance failures:

• Liverpool: Trustees “failed to consider or investigate” a safeguarding complaint against Bishop Perumbalath and did not ensure that risks were properly assessed or reported.
  
  
• Chelmsford: Trustees failed over a period of “about two years” to report a serious safeguarding incident relating to a complaint made in 2023 about Perumbalath’s conduct during his earlier ministry in the diocese.

Both dioceses have issued statements acknowledging shortcomings. Liverpool’s trustees explicitly accept that they “did not adequately discharge their safeguarding responsibilities”. Chelmsford disputes some of the Commission’s conclusions but accepts the need for stronger trustee oversight.

The regulator’s findings are stark: trustees were not given the information they needed, and safeguarding concerns were not handled in line with charity law.

This is not an isolated failure. It is part of a pattern.

The structural problem: Safeguarding in the shadows

The Church of England’s safeguarding system is structurally flawed – I am not the only person or organisation who has been saying this for years. Investigations and decisions are routinely handled in private by:

• Bishops
• Archbishops
• The Archbishops’ Council
• The National Safeguarding Team

These bodies operate with limited transparency, limited external scrutiny, and – crucially – no statutory independence. Time and again, independent reviews, survivor testimonies, and media investigations have shown that this system fails those it is meant to protect.

The Church of England will point to its INEQE safeguarding audits as evidence of external scrutiny – as it repeatedly does to suggest that their actions are scrutinised. INEQE has not published audits for either Liverpool or Chelmsford. Liverpool’s audit is scheduled for the coming weeks. No date is given for Chelmsford’s audit.

Survivors and campaigners have long criticised INEQE’s methodology for relying heavily on diocesan self‑assessment and for failing to engage meaningfully with victims. The Charity Commission’s findings now underline the limitations of that approach. Where INEQE tends to produce reassuring, institution‑friendly commentary, the statutory regulator has identified serious mismanagement, inadequate processes, and a lack of trustee oversight.

The contrast could not be clearer: the Church’s preferred auditing model is simply not capable of detecting the failures that the Charity Commission has now exposed. Instead, the Charity Commission’s warnings confirm what many have long argued: the Church’s internal safeguarding structures are not fit for purpose.

1. Trustees are kept in the dark

In both dioceses, trustees were unaware of key safeguarding concerns. This is not unusual. Across the Church, safeguarding cases involving clergy – especially senior clergy – are handled privately by bishops and the NST. Trustees cannot fulfil their legal duties if they are not informed.

2. Bishops hold too much unchecked power

Bishops are simultaneously:

• Pastoral leaders
• Line managers
• Public representatives
• Decision‑makers in safeguarding cases

This creates unavoidable conflicts of interest. When allegations involve senior clergy – or bishops themselves –the system becomes even more compromised.

3. The NST is not independent

The National Safeguarding Team reports to the Archbishops’ Council, not to an external regulator. It operates within the same hierarchical culture that has repeatedly failed survivors.

4. The Archbishops’ Council has been formally criticised

In November 2025, the Charity Commission issued a public admonishment stating that the Archbishops’ Council must “rapidly accelerate safeguarding reforms” because progress was too slow and governance was inadequate.

That Council is chaired by Stephen Cottrell.

Stephen Cottrell’s leadership: A fair and necessary critique

This is not about personal attacks. It is about leadership, governance, and accountability.

Stephen Cottrell has repeatedly presented himself as the figure who will transform safeguarding in the Church of England. In public statements, he has said:

• “We are committed to creating a safer Church.”
• “We will learn from past mistakes.”
• “We will rebuild trust.”

Yet under his leadership:

• The Archbishops’ Council has been formally criticised by the Charity Commission for slow and inadequate safeguarding reform.
• The House of Bishops has failed to deliver the independent safeguarding structures repeatedly promised to survivors.
• General Synod has been given partial or delayed information about safeguarding controversies, with key documents withheld or heavily controlled.
• The Church continues to rely on internal processes that lack independence, transparency, and credibility.

As Archbishop of York, Cottrell is not responsible for every operational failure. But he is responsible for:

• The culture of safeguarding leadership
• The pace of reform
• The transparency of national governance
• The oversight of the NST
• The information given to Synod
• The direction of the Archbishops’ Council

The Charity Commission’s warnings land squarely within his sphere of responsibility.

Trustees: The legal risks you now face

Trustees of Church of England bodies – members of bishop’s councils or Diocesan Board of Finance executive committees – are legally responsible for safeguarding. The Charity Commission has now made it clear that:

• Trustees cannot delegate safeguarding oversight to bishops or the NST.
• Trustees cannot rely on being “kept informed” – they must insist on information.
• Trustees must ensure that serious incidents are reported promptly.
• Trustees must challenge inadequate processes.
• Trustees may face personal regulatory consequences if they fail to act.

If trustees sit back and allow safeguarding to be mismanaged by bishops, archbishops, the Archbishops’ Council, or the NST, they risk:

• Regulatory action
• Disqualification
• Reputational damage
• Scrutiny from statutory agencies

The era of assuming “the bishop handles safeguarding” is over.

The path forward: Independent, statutory safeguarding

The Charity Commission’s intervention makes one thing clear: the Church cannot continue to police itself.

A statutory, independent safeguarding body is now essential. It would:

• Remove conflicts of interest
• Ensure trustees receive the information they need
• Provide consistent standards across dioceses
• Restore public trust
• Protect vulnerable people
• Protect trustees from being placed in impossible positions

This reform has been promised for years. Under Stephen Cottrell’s leadership, it has not been delivered.

Leadership must be accountable

The Charity Commission’s warnings are not just about two dioceses. They are about a national safeguarding culture that has failed repeatedly – and about leadership that has not delivered the reform it promised.

Stephen Cottrell has held the most senior safeguarding leadership roles in the Church of England. He has chaired the bodies responsible for reform. He has controlled what Synod sees and does not see. He has spoken of transformation, but the regulator now finds mismanagement in dioceses connected to the system he oversees.

This is not a personal attack. It is a fair, evidence‑based assessment of leadership.

The Church of England cannot rebuild trust without accountability. And accountability must begin at the top.

A Church that has received two unprecedented Charity Commission warnings cannot credibly rebuild trust while the same leadership structures – and the same leaders – remain in place.

Stephen Cottrell has chaired the Archbishops’ Council through repeated regulatory criticism, overseen a safeguarding system that still operates in secrecy, and promised transformation that has simply not materialised. These are not questions of personal morality; they are questions of governance, judgement, and public responsibility.

At some point, leadership must be accountable for the culture it has shaped and the failures that have occurred under its watch. That moment has now arrived. For the sake of survivors, for the integrity of the Church, and for the credibility of the reforms that must follow, Stephen Cottrell should step aside.

The post Safeguarding, secrecy, and accountability: Why the Charity Commission’s warnings must be a turning point for the Church of England appeared first on Church Abuse.

6 February 2025

Dear Bishop,

This is an open letter to all of the diocesan bishops of the Church of England, ahead of next week’s meeting of the General Synod. The letter will be published shortly at churchabuse.uk. Any replies to this letter will also be published at churchabuse.uk, unless you indicate in your reply that you do not wish for it to be published.

The world is watching. Journalists are digging deep to find the stories behind the scandals; MPs are making increasingly hardline statements in Parliament; the Charity Commission are finally taking an interest; and an opinion poll published today puts trust in the Church of England at an all time low.

We are told that, following the publication of the Makin Review and the resignation of Justin Welby, that the Church of England understands the depth of the crisis and that next week’s meeting of the General Synod will be when the Church takes action to start putting things right.

If the Synod does that, then victims, survivors, advocates and campaigners will have no need to keep on being “shouty campaigners”.

The real question is this: will the Church of England take this opportunity to finally do the right thing and introduce proper and effective safeguarding structures; or will it continue to prevaricate and pretend that it is changing, while changing nothing?

Your answers to the Charity Commission following next week’s Group of Sessions will become a matter of record.  If another safeguarding scandal emerges in five, 10 or 15 years’ time, you won’t be able to blame the Church of England’s processes, constitutional arrangements or structures if you are found wanting, if you tell the Charity Commission that there are no such problems.

And if there are such problems, what will you tell the Charity Commission you did about them when you respond to Mr Holdsworth’s letter?

Will the safeguarding business before General Synod make a difference?

Independence in Safeguarding

This is a clear example of the Church of England saying it is doing one thing, while not actually doing it. There has already been a failed attempt to create an Independent Safeguarding Board. The problem was, the Board operated independently, as they were told they were, but the Archbishops’ Council wanted to control it. As a result, the Archbishops’ Council abolished the ISB and the victims and survivors who the ISB were supporting remain unsupported; despite promises to them in private that reviews will be continued; and statements in public that they are underway.

When the Archbishops of Canterbury and York announced the setting up of a review by Alexis Jay and John O’Brien, they also said that they would ask them to help implement the recommendations. But before the report was handed over the Archbishops’ Council established a “response group” to water down the proposals. What will come to the Synod next week is not an independent safeguarding structure.

In the motion being proposed by the Bishop of Stepney, General Synod is being asked to “affirm its commitment to greater independence”. Up until now, the Church of England has spoken of “independence” in safeguarding, rather than “greater independence”. What does “greater independence” mean? It means no independence at all.

Legal advice – official legal advice from the Archbishops’ Council, and unofficial legal advice commissioned by the Diocese of Gloucester – has been distributed to Synod members casting doubt on the legal ability of the Archbishops’ Council, Diocesan Boards of Finance and Parochial Church Council’s to delegate their safeguarding responsibilities to a third party. This is a typical “wrecking move” by the Church of England hierarchy.

Legal Advice can only tell you what the law says. If the General Synod approves a Measure, it changes the law.

And if charities can’t delegate their safeguarding responsibilities, why do dioceses take over safeguarding issues in parishes? And why does the Archbishops’ Council (through its National Safeguarding Team)

We need to be clear what we mean by Independence. It is perfectly possible for Church charities to retain responsibility for some safeguarding functions: safer recruitment, delivery of training, policy development, and so on; while passing responsibility to investigate allegations of wrongdoing to a fully independent body.

And, if that independent body has full autonomy, authority and power to investigate what it decides to investigate, it will be able to scrutinise whether safer recruitment and training is being done appropriately.

Anything short of a fully independent body responsible for investigating safeguarding allegations and concerns will not work. The Church has long lost its moral authority to investigate itself – victims, survivors, advocates and campaigners have known this for a long time. It is only now that this seems to becoming understand by the wider Church (although I suspect that some senior staff of the Archbishops’ Council still do not understand it).

Safeguarding Risk Assessment Regulations

In addition to investigating and assessing concerns and allegations, the independent body should have responsibility for approving new safeguarding legislation and codes. Of course, the statutory processes for passing Measures, Canons and Acts of Synod must continue, but an additional step should be introduced, to ensure that the independent body has the power to comment on drafts, and to block any legislation that would make the situation worse, or which does not deal adequately with the need for legislative development.

Take the Safeguarding Risk Assessment Regulations coming for Synod next week. These provide some tinkering around the edges – but they are just that. Tinkering.

The recent high profile news coverage of cases including Andrew Hindley (Blackburn) and David Tudor (Chelmsford) have highlighted the lack of power available to bishops (and DSOs) to take action to mitigate or remove any identified risk. The former Bishop of Blackburn, Julian Henderson, raised this issue – without mentioning the case of Andrew Hindley – with the revision committee for the last Miscellaneous Provisions Measure. The committee agreed that this was an urgent issue that needed to be dealt with at speed. This was set out in the committee’s written report to the Synod, and was emphasised in her speech by the chair of the committee, Archdeacon Nikki Groarke.

I was a member of the revision committee and prepared draft clauses which could have dealt with the issue in a proportionate way, with protections for affected clergy through appeals to the President of Tribunals. But the legal advice we received – from Church House lawyers who would have been well aware of Blackburn’s difficulty with Hindley going back decades – was that a Miscellaneous Provisions Measure was not the vehicle for such change, and that new Risk Assessment Regulations were being prepared which could tackle the issue.

Which raises the question – why are they not addressed? Why did the lawyers who prepared the draft regulations not dealt with this issue. Cases like Hindley and Tudor are likely to be rare – but clearly not unheard of. Here is an opportunity for the Church to change the processes that are often blamed for a lack of action, but the opportunity has not been taken. Why?

Clergy Conduct Measure

Another example of tinkering around the edges is the draft Clergy Conduct Measure. As a bishop, you almost certainly will not need convincing that the existing Clergy Discipline Measure is not fit for purpose. And you may be satisfied that the role of bishops in the preliminary stages of formal complaints about clergy have all-but been removed.

However, while you may be more familiar with complaints about that part of the process – because of the parts that you and your offices will have had in them – they are not the only part of the current process that has been subject to sustained and justified criticism.

Ignoring the inadvisability of adding minor grievances to a disciplinary process, the main issue with the current, and proposed measure is the substantive part of the complaint process, after the preliminary scrutiny stages.

Under the existing CDM, complaints are forwarded to the Designated Officer to investigate and prepare a report for the President of Tribunals. If the President or their deputy / delegate decides that a complaint should proceed to the tribunal, the Designated Officer will “prosecute” the case.

Under the proposed CCM, complaints are forwarded to the Investigations and Tribunals Team  to investigate and prepare a report for the President of Tribunals. If the President or their deputy / delegate decides that a complaint should proceed to the tribunal, the Investigations and Tribunals Team will “prosecute” the case.

The problem here is that the Designated Officer is a lawyer from the NCI’s legal office. And the Investigations and Tribunal Team will be “one or more” lawyer(s) from the NCI’s legal office.

The only change is in the name. The process – the much flawed and highly criticised process – remains identical. After all the consultation that has gone into preparing this draft legislation, to come up with a change of name as the only significant difference is appalling, but demonstrates why victims, survivors, advocates and campaigners have no trust in the Archbishops’ Council’s and the wider Church of England’s ability to improve. It is not learing the lessons.

Another problem with the draft legislation is the continued secrecy surrounding the process – secrecy that is not supported by the common law of England.

It is telling that the secrecy clauses in the present process are not mentioned anywhere in the Measure or Rules. This is because Parliament is likely to block any Measure or Rules that contain unlawful secrecy clauses. The Code of Practice is not law, but contains a threat of referral to the High Court for anybody who dares tells anybody about a CDM complaint.

When the General Synod debated whether CCM tribunals should sit in public rather than in private, they were misled by the revision committee – both in writing and orally. Synod was told that secrecy was the norm in other tribunals, and the General Medical Council was cited as an example.

All GMC tribunals actually sit in public, with the (rarely used) power to sit in private when necessary; and with the power to impose reporting restrictions – just like every other court and tribunal in England and Wales.

This is because such transparency is the basic standard under common law, as frequently upheld by the UK Supreme Court.

It has been argued that the secrecy is to protect victims of abuse from public scrutiny. But the Measure as currently allows a respondent to say that it should sit in public. This gives (alleged) abusers the power to subject victims to the scrutiny that the Measure is said to prevent. So this argument does not work.

If this Measure is passed as it is, I will submit evidence to the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament and ask them to declare it “not expedient”. The evidence will include the lies that Synod were told about secrecy during the passage of the Measure; and how the Clergy Discipline Commission abuse their powers by adding secrecy to its Code, which is treated as law despite not having the power of law.

Final Thoughts

Next week’s Synod will face more external scrutiny that any other group of sessions in recent years; and you know that you will have

to answer to the Charity Commission after this group of sessions, how will you vote?

• Will you send the Clergy Conduct Measure back for further revision, or will you approve it and face having it rejected by Parliament?
  
  
• Will you send the Safeguarding Risk Assessment Regulations back for further revision, or will you approve them and face having to tell the Charity Commission that you approved new regulations that do not deal with the major problem that exists with the current regulations?
  
  
• Will you support a fully independent process for investigating safeguarding allegations and concerns, or will you seek to water down proposals for independence to retain the status quo – a process which is deeply flawed and not fit for purpose.

I know that a considerable amount of amendments are likely to be tabled to next week’s safeguarding business. Like you, I will not know what these are until the relevant notice papers and order papers are published.

But I know from experience that some amendments are likely to water down proposals for independence in safeguarding investigations and scrutiny. Others will be designed to strengthen processes and improve the Church’s safeguarding capabilities.

Please exercise discernment and judgment in deciding how to vote on these amendments.

The Church of England is often said to be Episcopally led and Synodically governed. Now is the time for you to show leadership in safeguarding that has been missing from the bishops, collectively, for some time.

I have lost count of the amount of times I have heard bishops say that they were “following legal advice”. Lawyers advise. Law makers decide. On this matter, you are a law maker. Please do the right thing and decide to support those things that will make the Church a safer place.

The Church of England is at crisis point. The resignation of Justin Welby following the publication of the Makin Review has been described as a “watershed moment” and “a turning point”.

The Charity Commissioners are not the only people who will be watching next week’s Synod. Victims, survivors, advocates, campaigners, parliamentarians and the media will all be watching to see what Synod does.

Just imaging what would happen if Synod does the right thing. I would like nothing more than to be to say that the Church of England’s leadership has finally got the message and is doing the right thing.

You will not be criticised for supporting a delay to final approval of the Clergy Conduct Measure and the Safeguarding Risk Assessment Regulations (just as there has been little criticism of the necessary delay to the draft measure setting up the abuse redress scheme). It is important to move speedily – but not at the expense of getting it right.

Alternatively, if Synod does the wrong thing, and operates as though it is business as usual, the campaigning will only step up – and this time victims, survivors, advocates and campaigners are being joined by the Charity Commission and parliamentarians in watching what you do and being prepared to call you out.

Your leadership now, and through next week’s meeting of the General Synod, will be a key factor in determining whether this is, in fact, a turning point for the Church of England on safeguarding; or just another step in the contusing moral collapse of the Church’s leadership.

I will be praying for you as you deliberate over these vitally important matters.

Gavin Drake

The post An open letter to the Church of England’s Diocesan Bishops: General Synod and Safeguarding appeared first on Church Abuse.

A miracle! The Charity Commission has finally taken public action in response to the ongoing safeguarding fiasco at the Church of England and its Archbishops’ Council.

Last week, the Charity Commission’s chief executive, David Holdsworth, wrote to those members of the General Synod who are also charity trustees. This must mean most, if not all, General Synod members, because membership of the General Synod comes with automatic membership of a parish’s Parochial Church Council (for laity). Clergy are automatically members of their PCC. And bishops are generally chairs of the Bishops’ Council, which in most cases is the trustee body of the diocesan board of finance.

In his letter, Holdsworth says: “The Commission understands that the safeguarding related business to be considered by the Synod in February is intended to rectify the inadequacies highlighted by various past reviews and reports.  

“All charity trustees have a duty to take reasonable steps to protect from harm people who come into contact with their charity. Trustees should ensure that processes, procedures and training are fit for purpose and enable them to effectively discharge their duties in relation to safeguarding. This includes being satisfied that, where concerns are raised, appropriate action is taken in a timely manner and processes are in place so that safeguarding concerns are not able to be ignored or covered up.

“It is therefore important that, as a trustee of a Church charity attending the General Synod in February 2025, you remain aware of your legal trustee duties during debate and voting on relevant Synod business such that you are satisfied the changes will enable you to comply with your duty to take reasonable steps to keep all who come into contact with your charity safe.”

If Synod members keep this warning in mind as they consider the bulk of the safeguarding business at this month’s meetings, they will reject them all.

Because none of the proposals being put to Synod will make any improvements to safeguarding whatsoever.

I’ve already addressed many of the failures in much of the Synod’s safeguarding agenda items.

Read that post for the detail, but in summary:

• New Safeguarding Risk Assessment Regulations which do not address the serious and long-known problem whereby a bishop can force a priest to undergo a risk assessment, but then has no power to take action in response to the risk assessment. Why is this “serious lacuna” not being addressed in the new regulations?
  
  The phrase “serious lacuna” was used by the former Bishop of Blackburn, Julian Henderson – presumably with the case of Canon Andrew Hindley in mind – when he asked for urgent action to close this gap.
  
  
• The draft Clergy Conduct Measure is supposed to be a replacement for the much-criticised Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM). The CDM has been criticised by complainants and respondents alike; by bishops and archdeacons, and by victims and survivors. It is not fit for purpose.
  
  The Archbishops’ Council did an awful lot of work to getting to this “take it or leave it” final approval stage of the replacement.
  
  Unfortunately, the new Clergy Conduct Measure does not address ANY of the criticisms of the current Clergy Discipline Measure. The use of unaccountable secret kangaroo courts, supposedly independent but actually “owned” by the Archbishops’ Council, continues; as does the unaccountable Clergy Discipline Commission and the taking over of complaints by Church of England lawyers.
  
  Under the CDM, complaints were investigated by “the Designated Officer.” The Designated Officer would submit his report to the President of Tribunals and if the President decided a tribunal should be held, the Designated Officer would “prosecute” the case (not the complainant).
  
  Under the new Clergy Conduct Measure, complaints will be investigated by an “Investigations and Tribunals Team”. The Investigations and Tribunal Team will submit their report to the President of Tribunals and if the President decided that a tribunal should be held, the Investigations and Tribunals Team would “prosecute” the case (not the complainant).
  
  The Designated Officer is a barrister, employed by the Archbishops’ Council as a member of the Legal Office of the National Church Institutions
  
  The Investigations and Tribunals Team will be “one or more” lawyers who are employed as “members of the Legal Office of the National Church Institutions”
  
  So what has changed, other than names? How will this new measure make any real or significant difference to the flawed system in place now?
  
  
• Independence in Safeguarding will be a a key focus of this next meeting of the Synod. But the proposals do not provide anything which can be described as “independence”.
  
  When Steve Reeves, a former member of the Independent Safeguarding Board addressed the General Synod in July 2023, despite the best efforts of senior Archbishops’ Council lawyer to stop him, he said this: “It’s clear to me that when the Archbishops’ Council talks about independence they do not mean independence in the way that you or I or the average person in the street means independence. It means semi-detached. When they talk about trust, they mean obedience; when they talk about communication, they mean loyalty.”
  
  And what has been presented to Synod: two proposals, neither of which is independence. Both models sees the staff of the current National Safeguarding Team being transferred to a new “independent” body which will continue to be controlled by the Archbishops’ Council.
  
  All sorts of reasons are given, including the much-used tactic of “legal advice”. In this case, the report to Synod says that “legal advice to the Response Group confirms that charities such as the Archbishops’ Council, Cathedral Chapters and Diocesan Boards of Finance can delegate safeguarding functions to an external supplier. . .
  
  “As set out in the appended legal advice, this is a delegation of functions and the underlying accountability remains as at present. Charities cannot delegate their underlying duty to be responsible for good safeguarding.  It follows that the Archbishops’ Council . . . Bishop or Cathedral Chapter (as relevant) will need arrangements to monitor the performance of the operational function and to be able to change provider if the service provided is not of the required standard.”
  
  Ah, so semi-detached. As Steve Reeves, so eloquently described it in July 2023.
  
  If the Church of England REALLY believe this, why do diocesan safeguarding teams ALWAYS take over the management of actual safeguarding cases that arise in parishes (parishes being separate charities from the diocesan board of finance); and why does the Archbishops’ Council ALWAYS take over the management of actual safeguarding cases that arise in dioceses, if they consider them to be complex or involving senior clergy?
  
  Legal advice can only tell people what the law says. The thing about the Church of England, though, is that it is a law maker. The General Synod can change Acts of Parliament. And it can pass Measures which have the same status as an Act of Parliament. So legal advice which says a body can’t do something because “the law says so” is very incomplete when it comes to the Church of England.
  
  And in any event, none of this is needed. With proper independence of safeguarding, The parishes, dioceses, cathedrals, Archbishops’ Council and other Church of England charities would retain responsibility for the prevent aspect of safeguarding: policy development, training, safer recruitment, and so on.
  
  The independence comes in the form of a response body to investigate and take action on safeguarding incidents.
  
  Elsewhere, such independent bodies do not prevent action by the “main” body. For example, NHS trusts can take action against doctors, nurses and other medical staff. But that doesn’t preclude investigation or properly independent tribunals by the GMC’s Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (for doctors), the Nursing and Midwifery Council (for nurses); or the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (for other staff).
  
  In the same way, a school, academy trust or local education authority can take action to discipline a teacher for misconduct; but that doesn’t prevent investigation or properly independent tribunals by the Teaching Regulation Agency.
  
  The approach of the Church of England under the two proposals to be debated, is so different from other bodies do. And it isn’t joined up. Under the proposals, the Archbishops’ Council’s secretive kangaroo tribunals, chaired by Archbishops’ Council contracted lawyers, whose charging decisions are advised by Archbishops’ Council’s employed lawyers remain the sole people able to remove a priest from office, no matter how clear the safeguarding risk.
  
  And the blanket of secrecy on the process prevents proper scrutiny of the decisions. We know, because of a leak to the BBC, that Canon Andrew Hindley did not face a clergy discipline tribunal because no permission to proceed was given. Why? We don’t know, because – despite no legal requirement to do so – the President of Tribunal’s office do not publish such decisions; and they warn others not to do so, with powerless threats of a referral to the High Court for contempt if they do so.
  
  No – the models for “independence” in safeguarding for Synod to consider this month provide no independence.
  
  Which is odd, because on that same Sunday afternoon in July 2023 when Steve Reeves spoke of the Archbishops’ Council meaning “semi-detached” when they use the word “independence”, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, also addressed Synod.
  
  “This is a watershed moment,” he said. “We can’t get this wrong again. We can no longer think that we can deliver these things ourselves. . . Not only do we need independent oversight and scrutiny of safeguarding, we also need independent help on deciding how best to do it and implement it.”
  
  And so Professor Alexis Jay was commissioned to come up with those proposals. Rather than debating those, the Synod is instead debating two options put forward by an Archbishops’ Council commission “Response Group” which do not deliver what is being promised.

As the Charity Commission watch proceedings in Synod this month to consider whether the changes passed by the Synod really will “rectify the inadequacies highlighted by various past reviews and reports”, I hope they will not be taken in by the lies, half-truths and obfuscation that will inevitably flow from members of the Archbishops’ Council (such practice is now a routine part of the Archbishops’ Council approach to Synod members – just look at the Questions’ Notice paper when it is published on 6 or 7 February if you don’t believe me). The Charity Commission, like the Synod, need to look at the detail. Not the explanations.

If they did, they would conclude that the safeguarding measures being put before the Synod this month WILL DO NOTHING AT ALL to “rectify the inadequacies” of the current safeguarding practice in the Church of England.

Synod members: Be bold. Stand up and say “NO MORE”.  Don’t be complicit in the ongoing re-abuse of victims and survivors.

• See also: An open letter to the Chair and Chief Executive of the Charity Commission

The post Too little, too late: Charity Commission reminds General Synod of charity trustee’s safeguarding duties appeared first on Church Abuse.