THE General Synod voted without debate on Saturday morning to send the Church Funds Investment Measure from the Revision Committee to the Steering Committee for final drafting. The measure enables the trustee of a CBF Church of England Fund to transfer its assets to a charity authorised investment fund.
It signifies that those funds will turn into authorised and controlled by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Charity Commission. VAT will now not be payable on investment managers’ fees, leading to a value saving to charity investors.
Synod also voted to commit the Chancel Repairs (Church Commissioners’ Liability) Measure to the Final Drafting and Approval stage.
It is an enforceable liability to repair, or contribute to the fee of repairing, the chancel of a parish church, and, for historical reasons, is in some cases attached to the ownership of land.
In 2009, the Church Commissioners relieved PCCs of registering liability in cases where the Commissioners owned the land. The measure proposes that this now becomes a free-standing statutory duty of the Commissioners.
Moving the motion, the Archdeacon of West Cumberland, the Ven. Stewart Fyfe (Carlisle), described the measure as “well drafted and boringly sensible, in that respect”. The measure, because it had stood, had led to ”a splatter of unintended consequences”. The revision committee had returned it unamended.
The Third Church Estates Commissioner, Canon Flora Winfield, commended the measure. “By retaining the liability ourselves as a substitute of passing it on, and by putting this on a statutory footing, the Commissioners are significantly mitigating the danger of non-payment or legal motion,” she said, describing it as “a more pastorally sensitive approach for all concerned.”
The Archdeacon of London, the Ven. Luke Miller, was delighted. Chancel repair liability “causes a really significant amount of pastoral tension for us right across the Church,” he said. “Something that, when it was originally arrange, was sensible and equitable has turn into an actual mess — and infrequently entirely inequitable, as people buy the property and don’t realise they’re subject to very significant responsibilities. It can create all types of nightmares. We can’t clear all of it up, but we should always note how significant a difficulty it’s.”
