The petitioners sought a faculty for works to install modest kitchen facilities in a side passage of this Grade I listed church. The works had largely been completed prior to the petition, during an interregnum. The evidence before the court was that the churchwardens had been operating under a misapprehension that works under £7,000 needed no authorisation; the inspecting architect regarded the matters as falling within List A and therefore needing no authorisation; and the contractor assumed that the requisite permissions were in place. The court was highly critical of the architect for his, possibly ex post facto, justification for the works as falling within List A, when the work could not possibly come within that category. The court was also critical of the contractor for failing to request sight of a faculty before beginning work.

In considering a petition for a confirmatory faculty, the test to be applied was the assessment of whether a faculty would have been granted had it been sought prospectively. Applying the Duffield framework, the court considered there to be no harm to the significance of the building; and the parish in its statement of need had rebutted the ordinary presumption against change. However, the court noted that, with prior consultation with the Diocesan Advisory Committee, a more ambitious project could have been explored, which could have transformed the mission and outreach of the community.

The court made provisional costs orders against both churchwardens, the architect and the contractor. The architect had fallen well short of the professional standard expected of a competent inspecting architect, and the Parochial Church Council (PCC) would be unwise to continue to retain him. A copy of the judgment was to be sent to the Ecclesiastical Architects and Surveyors Association and the PCCs of any other parish where he was the inspecting architect. [DW]