A PARISH church that failed to “have due regard” to the guidance on the Church of England’s commitment to net zero when it applied for a faculty to replace convection gas heaters with nine new convection gas heaters has been granted the faculty.
The Consistory Court of the diocese of Newcastle permitted the faculty for the church, Holy Cross, Newcastle, as an exception, owing to the financial penalties that would be incurred by the parish had it been refused.
The church’s PCC had been in discussion with the DAC since at least November 2023 about the need to replace the church’s heating system. In February, the parish obtained a quotation of £33,795.60 from a contractor to remove the existing convection gas heaters and replace them with a contemporary equivalent.
At a meeting on 6 June, the DAC indicated the need for further evidence of the steps taken to consider and evaluate options, and concluded that it could not recommend the parish’s proposal for approval. The DAC pointed to concerns regarding the justification of the decision to replace the heaters with another fossil-fuel system. It recommended taking the opinion of an independent consultant. That recommendation was not followed.
It then became clear that the parish had already committed a deposit of £17,000 to the contractor. This caused the Archdeacon of Northumberland to approach the Registry with a view to urging the court to take a sympathetic view of the church’s position, given the financial embarrassment that would inevitably follow if permission for the proposal was refused.
The application for a faculty was heard by the Diocesan Chancellor, His Honour Simon Wood. He said that the statement of needs presented before the court was “conspicuously silent” on the C of E’s commitment to net zero and the need to have “due regard” to it under the CBC’s guidance issued under the Dioceses, Pastoral and Mission Measure 2007 and the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2015.
“Where legislation, whether an Act of Parliament or a Church Measure, imposed a duty on a person to ‘have due regard’ to guidance of this sort,” the Chancellor said, the legal duty to have due regard meant that “the person to whom the guidance was directed is not free to follow the guidance or not as he or she chooses.” As a matter of law, the guidance had to be followed unless there were “cogent reasons” for not doing so.
In declining to recommend the parish’s proposal for approval, the DAC plainly had that principle in mind, the Chancellor said. The evidence suggested that, in so far as advice was taken, it was from contractors who had an interest in securing a contract from the parish. There was no independent evidence in support of the other rejected options.
The Chancellor shared the DAC’s concerns. He said that the guidance had not been given the required weight and that there had been “a too ready willingness to find ‘cogent reasons’ for not doing so”. The outcome, the Chancellor said, had been “to make a financial commitment that the parish simply cannot now afford to lose”. The court was “faced with a wholly avoidable problem”.
But the church needed to be properly heated. Apart from regular worship, the church was in use throughout the week by a variety of organisations of all age groups, for whom proper heating was essential. Although the court was critical of the lack of independent analysis, the heating system chosen appeared to be the only realistic one that was affordable, even though the court was handicapped by the lack of analysis of the consequences in terms of cost and carbon footprint of the alternatives.
“In considering the question of affordability”, the Chancellor said, the court could not “ignore the very substantial financial commitment already made for which there would be no obvious contractual or other remedy to recover it”.
Therefore, while the court deprecated the actions not taken by the parish, it concluded that, in the circumstances that had arisen, it would on this occasion grant the faculty sought. In the final analysis, “the need for heating alongside the financial penalty that refusal would entail requires a pragmatic approach,” the Chancellor said.
A refusal of a faculty would, in financial terms at least, almost certainly delay the meeting of the needs of the church, “because the loss thereby occasioned, together with the time . . . to accumulate the extra funds required for a likely more expensive alternative, would be substantial and hinder the ability of the church to fulfil its mission”, the Chancellor said.
There were two conditions of granting the faculty. First, the church was to enter into a green gas tariff or a separate agreement with a carbon-offsetting scheme to offset as best it could the emissions from the non-renewable gas that would be used over the lifetime of the new system. The second condition was that the church should draw up, with professional advice, a plan to identify steps open to it to make a meaningful contribution to net zero, setting out those that it would adopt and how it would maximise the available savings. The plan must be sent to the Registry by 28 February 2025.
This had been an “embarrassing episode in the governance of Holy Cross”, the Chancellor said. He emphasised that his judgment should not be “taken as a licence to be indulgent and should serve as a warning to any Newcastle diocesan parish that [was] inclined to act in like manner” that the outcome was likely to be “less benign”.
