Appeals

The Dean of Arches granted to the Victoria Society leave to appeal on restricted grounds in respect of a judgment by the Chancellor of the Diocese of Peterborough relating to reordering proposals for the church of St. Botolph Longthorpe.

Leave to appeal granted by the Dean of the Arches in respect of a decision by the Chancellor not to allow a Gaelic inscription on a memorial unless accompanied by an English translation.

This was an appeal against a decision of the Chancellor of the Diocese of Coventry (in Re St. Giles Exhall [2020] ECC Cov 1), who granted a faculty for a memorial which included a short inscription in Gaelic, but subject to a condition that there should be an English translation beneath the Gaelic inscription, to which the petitioner and her family objected. The Court of Arches heard the appeal on 24 February 2021 and  announced the same day its decision to allow the appeal, reserving its reasons to a written judgment, which was delivered on 16 June 2021.

In Re St. James Kidbrooke [2016] ECC 16 the Chancellor of the Diocese of Southwark granted a faculty to permit the installation of twelve antennae and two dishes behind GRP replacement louvres in the tower of the church and gave authority for the Rector to enter a licence agreement for a term of 20 years with the telecommunications company. The sole party opponent applied to the Court of Arches for leave to appeal on six grounds. The Dean of Arches refused to grant leave to appeal.

This is a decision on costs given by the Dean of Arches in respect of his refusal to grant leave to appeal (Re St. James Kidbrooke [2017] EACC 1).

The Dean of Arches allowed an appeal against the decision of the Chancellor of the Diocese, who refused to grant a confirmatory faculty for a memorial placed inside the church. The Dean pointed out that a faculty for a memorial inside a church should only be granted in exceptional circumstances. He found that in the present case there were exceptional circumstances, as the persons commemorated had been substantial benefactors of the church and the village over many years.

This was an appeal from a decision of the Chancellor of the Diocese of Peterborough, who had refused to grant a faculty for the sale of certain items of church silver. The reason for the proposed sale of the "redundant" silver had been to start a fund to meet the cost of building an extension to the church. The Court of Arches dismissed the appeal for the reasons given by the Chancellor in his judgment: the application to sell the silver was premature; there was no immediate financial crisis; planning permission had not yet been obtained (in fact planning permission had been refused two years earlier and no appeal had been made against the decision); there had not yet been any appeal for funds, and so one could not argue that the proceeds of a sale of the silver were vital to the completion of the project.

The Court refused to grant leave to appeal in respect of the judgment of the Chancellor of the Diocese of Chester, dated 4 August 2015, when the Chancellor refused to grant a faculty giving the petitioner the right to have her ashes interred in the grave of her late partner, the wife and two daughters of the deceased partner having objected to the grant of a faculty.

This was an appeal by the Victorian Society against the judgment of the Chancellor of Winchester Diocese of 12 March 2015, granting a faculty to replace the existing, Victorian font in the church with a new font made of Purbeck stone. The new font would be smaller than the Victorian font and would be installed on the south eastern, as opposed to south western, side of the nave. The Court decided that the Chancellor had erred and acted unfairly in his purported application of the written representations procedure, and that his judgment on the merits was flawed by several errors of law. Accordingly, the Court ordered that both his judgment and the resulting faculty be set aside.