In granting a faculty for an extension to a listed church, the chancellor criticised the way in which the case had been presented to the court, which he described as ‘a jumble of papers’. For the guidance of future petitioners, the chancellor made a number of observations as to the way in which faculty petitions should be presented. The fact that planning permission had been granted for proposals in the face of objections from amenity societies did not mean that a faculty would automatically follow. The consistory court was required (by rule 9(3) of the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2015) to give a direction for special notice unless a mandatory consultee had previously been consulted on the works in question and had indicated that it had no objection or comments to make. It followed that consultation must be on the actual works proposed in the petition and not some earlier iteration; mere consultation was not enough – the consultee must have indicated that it had no objection or comments; and any intervening grant of planning permission did not affect the materiality of any comments that it had made. Statements of significance were obligatory requirements, not optional extras. As it was the chancellor's decision that would be determinative (not the advice of the Diocesan Advisory Committee or a grant of planning permission by the local planning authority), the petitioners’ case should be presented in an ordered and orderly form; the chancellor should not be expected to absorb the unexplained history of proposals ‘by some form of judicial osmosis’. [Alexander McGregor]