Item 511

At General Synod earlier in the month I had hoped to be called in the debate on the Miscellaneous Provisions Measure (No2) - which all seems very dry but is quite important. Miscellaneous Provisions Measures gather up matters that are important enough to need legislation but not important enough to warrant a Measure on their own. 

I wanted to speak about Clause 6 on the appointment of Quinquennial Inspectors. Had I been called this is what I was going to say:

Quinquennial inspections of churches are of crucial importance. They help churchwardens, PCCs and all those in the parish who bear the responsibility for care of churches. They also support archdeacons in our support of the people at the sharp end to whom we must all be enormously grateful.

The Quinquennial Inspector is ideally someone who has a deep knowledge of the of building they are inspecting. A person who knows how to nurse a concrete structure into its 80th year as the reinforcement corrodes does not necessarily know the intricacies of medieval stonework, and one who can care for a 18th Century pots a feu may not have a visceral sympathy for Victorian red brick. They also need to have a visceral sympathy for the use of the building in mission today, including at least an understanding of the needs of the church tradition, and in addition will ideally be able to mend the loos and understand the M&E system.

All the skills and sympathies needed don’t necessarily inhere in one person so the appointment is a balance. And the interested parties may well put the balance in a different place. DAC, Archdeacon, PCC all have slightly different interests. We all want our wonderful buildings to work for mission and to be properly looked after. There are reasons why each party needs some sort of say in the appointment.

And the Inspection is a different thing in different places. Some archdeacons instruct and pay for the inspections, which are therefore independent reports to the archdeacon copied to the parish. In other places the parish instructs and pays. Ensuring 

The provisions in Clause 6 of this Miscellaneous Provisions Measure need to be consulted widely and not simply rushed through. There are unintended consequences here. The archdeacons discussing this have found that we have many different perspectives. So I bring not solutions but a request that something that is more complicated than it might look is properly discussed.