The court considered the incidence of costs when a lay member of the Parochial Church Council (PCC) (referred to only as ‘the churchwarden’) was responsible for the unlawful installation of a bell. The petitioners had, in 2014, obtained a faculty for the repair and re-hanging of its eighteenth-century ring of five bells, a project driven solely by the churchwarden. In around 2017, it emerged that there had been since 2014 a scheme for the addition of a treble as a war memorial; the bell had already been cast, and was awaiting installation. The petitioners were invited to apply for an amendment of the 2014 faculty to permit its installation, subject to PCC decision and public notice.

The application for amendment was made by the churchwarden. The certified copy of a purported PCC resolution in support of the application had been manufactured following the initiation of enquiries by the court. The public notice was displayed in early 2018, but press coverage revealed that the restored ring and the new bell had been installed and rung only three weeks after the end of the notice period. The certificate of practical completion of the works authorised by the original faculty, on which the signature of the second churchwarden appeared to be in the first churchwarden's writing, was filed two weeks later; it made no mention of the new bell. The incumbent failed to take any steps to comply with the court's directions to regularise the position before the bells were dedicated by the bishop.

The bellfounder was found to be at fault for failing to see a faculty authorising the work he was undertaking, but there were extenuating circumstances. The churchwarden had acted in clear and deliberate breach of his duties; and the incumbent's failure to supervise and failure to comply with directions was also blameworthy. They would bear the costs of the confirmatory amendment to the faculty personally, divided two-thirds and one-third respectively. [DW]