| ECCLESIASTICAL LAW — Faculty — Disposal of moveable property — Sale of font — Jurisdiction to authorise — Case for sale based on parish’s financial need — Whether “financial emergency”— Whether faculty to be granted
In re St Peter’s Church, Draycott; [2009] WLR (D) 105
Arches Court of Canterbury: Cameron QC, Dean of the Arches, Gage, Bishop Chh: 13 March 2009
A consistory court should not exercise its jurisdiction to authorise the sale of a font in order to carry out repairs to a church, merely on the basis of a “financial need”. The court had to be satisfied that there was a “financial emergency”, which meant an immediate pressing need to carry out urgent critical work for which funds were not, or could not be made, available.
The Court of Arches so held when allowing an appeal by the opponent, the Victorian Society, from the judgment of Briden Ch sitting in the Bath and Wells Consistory Court on 12 November 2007 whereby he had granted the petitioners, Reverend Stanley Price, Edward Dingley and Dorothea Oliver, a faculty authorising the sale of the font of the church, which was a listed building. The Church Buildings Council was granted leave to intervene on the appeal.
CAMERON QC, Dean of the Arches, referred to the principles in In re St Gregory’s, Tredington [1972] Fam 236 governing faculties for the disposal of movable property. The question was whether in all the circumstances the chancellor could properly have concluded that there was a genuine financial emergency in the parish justifying the disposal of the font. The court had reluctantly concluded that in assessing the weight of the petitioners’ case of financial need for funds in order to carry out repairs, the chancellor had been too readily persuaded that that amounted to a “financial emergency”. There was a substantial difference between “financial need” and “financial emergency”.The words “financial emergency” meant an immediate pressing need to carry out urgent critical work for which funds were not, or could not be made, available. His view of the financial emergency had then coloured his approach to the balancing of the points for and against the sale of the font. He had affirmed that “the importance attached to the font within the listing is, however, a significant factor pointing towards its retention within the building”. In the court’s view additional factors were that (i) the font was part of the heritage and all who had been baptised in it; (ii) it had been given expressly for the administration of the sacrament of Holy Baptism and had been in use for that purpose since 1861 and was not redundant; (iii) it was a fundamental feature and principal asset of a fine church; (iv) the proposal for sale had arisen out of an opportunistic offer by a collector and there was no evidence that it would have been pursued without that unsolicited offer; (v) the inevitable consequence of a sale at auction would be that the font would pass into private ownership and would no longer be accessible to the public; (vi) the church would be diminished in interest by the disappearance of a work of considerable architectural, artistic and historic importance. Consideration of those factors should have led the chancellor to hold that notwithstanding their present lack of funds the petitioners had not discharged the weighty standard of proof required to justify the sale of the font. Consequently when considering the font as a fixture the chancellor had erred in concluding that there was a compelling financial reason amounting to a necessity justifying the dislodging and sale of the font. |
