The Victorian Society objected to two aspects of proposals for re-ordering a Grade I listed church: the removal and replacement of the existing pew benches and the replacement of the floor of the nave. The Victorian Society characterised these as substantial and harmful changes. The chancellor held that, as the pews were free-standing items and not fixtures, the suggestion that their removal would result in harm to the significance of the listed building was misconceived. Their removal would not, as a matter of law, amount to the execution of works for the demolition or alteration of the listed building; in the secular system, no statutory consent would be required for their removal. The special considerations set out in the Duffield guidelines were intended to supply part of the equivalence of protection required by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's Guidance on the Operation of the Ecclesiastical Exemption. The first Duffield question, in asking whether proposals would result in harm to the significance of the church as a building of special architectural or historic interest, was necessarily concerned only with proposals that would, but for the ecclesiastical exemption, require approval under section 7 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. To hold otherwise would amount to applying to ecclesiastical buildings a stricter test than was applied in the secular system, something for which the Court of Arches had expressly said in Duffield there was no justification. The proposal to remove the pews was therefore subject only to the ordinary presumption in favour of things as they stand and not to any special listed buildings presumption. The replacement of the floor did engage the special presumption against proposals which would harm the significance of a listed building but that harm was at most only minor and was justified by the making available of the church as a community facility, in particular for use by the church school, which had no hall of its own. A faculty was granted but, in the light of advice from the Church Buildings Council, was subject to a condition that the replacement pew benches and chairs were not upholstered. [Alexander McGregor]