THE Consistory Court of the diocese of Salisbury has granted the PCC of St Mary’s, Stalbridge, a confirmatory faculty for a like-for-like substitute boiler, which had been installed without lawful authority, to interchange an old boiler.
The DAC had considered that the PCC’s proposal had not had “due regard” to the net-zero guidance as required by the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2022. Before the petition went before the court for consideration, nevertheless, the PCC procured the installation of the brand new boiler.
In 2022, St Mary’s, a Grade II listed medieval church, had been in interregnum for 3 years when the parish was confronted with the necessity to interchange the old oil-fired boiler, and the PCC proposed a like-for-like substitute.
The present Rector, Canon Richard Hancock, took up the incumbency at the tip of June 2022. The PCC and the churchwardens proceeded on the premise that a latest oil-fired boiler could possibly be approved under List B without the necessity for a college. That position modified on 1 July 2022, nevertheless, a change of which the parish was unaware until informed by the Archdeacon in October 2022. The old boiler was condemned in November 2022, and the college petition was begun in January 2023.
The Deputy Chancellor, David Willink, said that it was “unanswerable” that the PCC had not followed the net-zero guidance. That was partly because, at the purpose at which the choice was made to undertake a like-for-like substitute of the old boiler, there was no requirement that they need to follow the net-zero guidance.
The Deputy Chancellor said that, while there could be more that the PCC could have done, he accepted that “the marginally unhappy timeline of events”, through which the choice predated the requirement to have due regard to the guidance, presented “a cogent reason for not complying with that guidance before the choice was taken”.
The Deputy Chancellor emphasised that his decision “must not be thought to set a precedent”, since his conclusion arose out of the actual set of facts before him, which were “unlikely to arise again in the long run”.
The Deputy Chancellor said that he had taken no account of the undeniable fact that the brand new boiler had already been installed. A confirmatory faculty can be granted if, and provided that, a college would have been granted to authorise the works before they were carried out. He reiterated that the petitioners, and any who followed after in other parishes, “shouldn’t labour under any misapprehension that the undeniable fact that the work had already been done counts of their favour in any way”.
The PCC put before the court a revised quotation from the heating engineer for the installation of a in another way specified oil-fired boiler that could possibly be converted to run on non-fossil fuel (HVO: hydrotreated vegetable oil) at modest cost; a quotation for bringing three-phase electricity to the churchyard wall; and a quotation for the availability and installation of air-source heat pumps.
The petitioners said that their inability to heat the church the previous winter, coming on top of previous difficulties, including Covid and the interregnum, had been a major deterrent to church attendance and giving. “Plainly, the church have to be heated,” the Deputy Chancellor said; however the emergency measures taken in 2022, “while well meaning, were inappropriate given the effect on the material of the church”.
The confirmatory faculty was granted subject to 2 conditions. The first was that the PCC should undertake accredited carbon offsetting to offset all carbon-dioxide emissions from using fossil fuel in the brand new boiler.
The second condition was that the college authorised using the oil-fired boiler only until 31 December 2028. The petitioners could apply in the course of the lifetime of the college for an extension of that period. In considering any such extension, the court would take note of all of the circumstances, including evidence of compliance with the offsetting condition, whether the boiler had been converted to HVO, and the event of the parish’s long-term heating plan.
The petitioners were required to pay the court costs and the registry costs of the petition.
