I can’t help but be amused the document is headed ‘confidential’, and published on the internet.
There are quite a few Methodist Central Halls, still, but I assume they mean Westminster.
Interested Observer
24 days ago
“The ARCHBISHOP OF YORK emphasised the importance of doing things
differently in light of Makin, and demonstrating that the Church had changed.”
Isn’t it necessary to actually change, before you can demonstrate that you have changed? Or is the idea something akin to “fake it ’til you make it”: a man surrounded by scandal he has no idea how to improve asserts that it’s all great now, in the hope that the wishing makes it so?
Goodness no, good sir! Change is not necessary to claim change, or at least such is true in the cloud cuckoo land of Mr Cottrell.
It’s neither of those things, in my view. I think his meaning is ‘if we repeat it often enough people will believe it, and if people believe it, it must be true.’ Then they can all ‘carry on regardless’, as Messers Rogers and Thomas may have termed it all.
Has any of you had to renew your basic C of E safeguarding training lately? If so, how can you be so negative?? The female voice in an unvarying tone tells you that the church has now realised the error of its ways and one of our prime duties as Christians is to treat everyone with respect and be nice to survivors. As I ploughed my way through the room slowly filled up with pink flying pigs. And how anyone can ever be persuaded to be a Parish Safeguarding officer is beyond me! I’m still wondering whether to offer feedback… Read more »
I’m a volunteer trainer for my Diocese. I find face-to-face training gives the opportunities for wider discussion and questions, though the online is useful for those doing refresher or simply cannot make an in person training.
Hello, I hope you didn’t think I was trying to be rude to you and other trainers . I taught and managed safeguarding before I retired, so I find doing the basic level grates somewhat …. I agree with you entirely that face to face training is a great deal better so people can discuss issues and hear other viewpoints . This online version is better in one respect than a previous one where there was a male and female trainer – so the serious parts were always spoken by the ‘daddy’. But it would have been very hard to… Read more »
Kate Keates
23 days ago
And herein lies a dilemma. We have the welcome development of greater transparency but, inevitably because of the underlying systemic problems, that just triggers new criticism. It’s hard to see a positive way forwards.
Jonathan Chaplin
23 days ago
Mundane question: how does it take 2 months to produce minutes?
Committee structures are often a Jurassic Park. In universities, students are invited to consultative committees which start with laborious reading of terms of reference, approval of minutes and the like: they don’t come back, because (quite reasonably) they assume that a meeting which starts with half an hour of entirely procedural tedium is not one that transacts any serious business. Some I have been to have motions proposed and seconded, which is just absurd in 2025. The approval of minutes at the next meeting is a nonsense. A month or more after the instant meeting, no-one can remember what was… Read more »
Because a meeting is not a parliamentary debate, and unless your organisation is totally dysfunctional it is neither dealing with motions nor voting on them. Committees should arrive at decisions by consensus. I have sat in meetings in which the approval of minutes is proposed and seconded: that just makes the whole thing look ridiculous.
I used “re-litigated” metaphorically. Notes are taken. Those notes are, in the absence of clear evidence of bias or frank error, the end of it.
Every PCC, board of trustees, and school governors’ meeting of which I have been a part has had motions which are proposed and seconded, and the vote recorded. So does my local Labour branch. The danger of operating on a consensus model is that quieter members can be overlooked, and louder or more dominant members (or the vicar) can be assumed to carry the day. Voting gives everyone an equal chance, and recording the vote makes it obvious when there is significant dissension. The same is true of proposing and seconding approval of the minutes. It’s one small safeguard against… Read more »
I was once advised by my dad that minutes should not reflect what was said, but rather reflect what might have been said had the speaker been given more time to think prior to speaking. There is some sense to that. It may have been civil service practice in the old days. We all wish we could give more thought prior to making ad hoc statements at a meeting (or posting comments on a blog like this). The other view is that meetings have privately sorted out all the issues and actions (and the minutes) prior to the meeting, so… Read more »
And that’s what Hansard does: it smooths the prose. There is a presumption that Hansard is written by disinterested observers, which makes that smoothing acceptable to everyone involved. But the minutes of a meeting are often not verbatim, or even close to verbatim, but are meant to be a high-level summary. The problem is that if it’s not capturing actions, what is it capturing? The idea of minutes (as with Hansard) is to provide a record of the discussion, so that if there is ambiguity in the actions the discussions can be used to resolve them. In the limit, Hansard… Read more »
Minutes have many purposes. Firstly they are a working document recording actions. A good secretary should get them out within 24 hours and seek corrections 24 hours after that. Secondly they are a summary of the preceding meeting and some, quick process of reviewing them can be helpful: it means if someone takes contrary positions in successive meetings it is obvious and they are obliged to explain. Thirdly, in some cases they are a legal record of business if a challenge of misconduct is brought. In such cases, and I think the House of Bishops may be one, formally voting… Read more »
I’m sure that is a correct summary of the legal position. Whilst I am not familiar with C of E standing orders section 248 of the Companies Act 2006 imposes a duty that every company must cause minutes of all proceedings at meetings of its directors to be recorded. Those records must be kept for at least ten years from the date of the meeting. If a company fails to comply with this requirement, an offence is committed by every officer of the company who is in default. The penalty is a fine on scale 3, with a continuing daily… Read more »
I don’t disagree with the good practice, but is the Archbishops’ Council a “company” under the terms of the Companies Act? I don’t think it is. It is a corporation that is declared to exist for charitable purposes, but I don’t think company law applies to it, any more than it does to a PCC (which is also a corporation and a charity).
I think you will find that most auditors/independent financial examiners of church accounts request a copy of the PCC minutes. This allows them to trace large financial transactions and match them with PCC decisions.
As I said, I don’t disagree with the good practice. My quibble was as to whether company law applies. (It clearly does to diocesan boards of finance which are required to be limited companies, as I am reminded whenever I have to make the declarations and statements that auditors require of company directors.)
I did not intend to suggest that the Archbishops’ Council is a ‘company’. As you say, it is a registered charity with a governing document which I freely admit that I have not read.
The Companies Act section 248 requirement, whilst mandatory for ‘every company’, can clearly be considered good practice in other bodies whose governing document may well contain similar provisions. That was certainly true of the Constitution of a music charity of which I was formerly a trustee.
Nigel Goodwin
23 days ago
The ABY stated that Many issues were not safeguarding issues but issues of conduct that should be managed through conventional Human Resources processes. I have been questioning the intersection of codes of conduct (CCM) and safeguarding for a few weeks on TA, and Jay also used the term intersection. How do we know where the boundaries are? If it is stealing church funds, then that is not safeguarding but a criminal matter. If it is being a bully, or making derogatory personal comments, or practicing spiritual abuse, then it is definitely safeguarding. Surely any issues of conduct which affect other… Read more »
Bullying of e.g. a colleague is not a safeguarding matter because the colleague is not, in general, a child or vulnerable adult. It’s reprehensible behaviour but it’s not a safeguarding issue per se, unless you suspect that the individual is treating or is likely to treat children or vulnerable adults in the same way. I suppose you could argue that someone engaging in bullying behaviour towards their peers is even more likely to do it to those less able to fight back, but I’m not sure the dynamics of interpersonal relationships would support that. I’ve worked with (for) people who… Read more »
I’m afraid there are many misconceptions here. Safeguarding is not restricted to children, it is for adults too. ‘Vulnerable’ is not a word used in current safeguarding circles, the term is ‘at risk’ and this simply means that some are more at risk than others. Everybody is at risk to some degree.
I refer you to the England Athletics policies, and I understand these have much in common with other sports bodies, and are based on general safeguarding best practices as advised by experts.
From my link above, Scotland has the (Adult Support and Protection Act 2007) The text says: An adult at risk is an individual aged 16 years and over who: a) is unable to safeguard their own wellbeing, property, rights or other interests b) is at risk of harm, and c) because they are affected by disability, mental disorder, illness or physical or mental infirmity, is more vulnerable to being harmed than adults who are not so affected I found the link to the act https://www.gov.scot/publications/adult-support-protection-scotland-act-2007-short-introduction-part-1-act/ This uses the term ‘at risk’. Note also the definition of ‘at harm’. Has this… Read more »
I think you are misreading. The definitions you quote clearly lay out that adults at risk of harm are a subcategory of vulnerable adults. Some guidance now says “protected adults” rather than vulnerable, but the terminology also exists in the title of the disclosure and criminal record check “Protecting Vulnerable Groups” (PVG) scheme.
Can you please point out to me the sentence or paragraph where it says ‘adults at risk of harm are a sub category of vulnerable adults’. I could not find it. I have read the Scotland act again – yesterday I was reading whilst doing my day job, so apologise for any misreads. The section ‘who are adults at risk’ does indeed say that all three conditions need to be met. Harm, as I already quoted, includes ‘psychological harm ( e.g. by causing fear, alarm or distress)’ Looking at the England Care and Support Statutory Guidance 2014 act, section 14 covers safeguarding.… Read more »
There is disagreement on whether or not bullying should be classed as a safeguarding issue. Having seen the widespread and devastating damage even a single bully in a congregation can do, I think it should be regarding as a safeguarding problem. However, bullying is such an endemic problem in the C of E that it may not be practical to ask safeguarding departments to deal with it. The Scottish Episcopal Church may be different, of course – but somehow I don’t think it is.
There may be disagreement, but it is disagreement between those who can read and those who cannot!
There are some who, when faced with clear text and words, somehow go blind. Others refuse to even face it. ABY seems to fall into one of those categories. Maybe most bishops do too.
One issue with safeguarding is the difference between what social care might see as abuse v what church considers a problem. Bullying is an example which for adults not deemed to be vulnerable (adult at risk, protected etc) should be handled by an HR department.
See my detailed response above. Of course, there are levels of abuse, and levels of ‘at risk’, and we should be sensible, but what is not acceptable is for the church to ignore the relevant acts. I hope the charity commission will be robust. If I was bullied at work, I would report it to the HR department initially, and would expect the HR department to investigate in a timely manner and the investigation should be carried out by independent people, maybe from a different part of the company. So, in a church situation, I would expect an investigation to… Read more »
To be honest the boundaries of safequarding can be a grey area. I was pushing it because I have never seen a discussion on what jay calls the intersection between safeguarding and conduct. I am sure there will be a variety of views. Given the church’s hesitancy to move towards full independent safeguarding, i can envisage the church will try to move the boumdary and maintain full control over ccm. We may also see greater interest by secular authorities. Why should we trust internal ccm when we dont trust internal safeguarding?? In a way the strict legal words are not… Read more »
I can’t help but be amused the document is headed ‘confidential’, and published on the internet.
There are quite a few Methodist Central Halls, still, but I assume they mean Westminster.
“The ARCHBISHOP OF YORK emphasised the importance of doing things
differently in light of Makin, and demonstrating that the Church had changed.”
Isn’t it necessary to actually change, before you can demonstrate that you have changed? Or is the idea something akin to “fake it ’til you make it”: a man surrounded by scandal he has no idea how to improve asserts that it’s all great now, in the hope that the wishing makes it so?
Goodness no, good sir! Change is not necessary to claim change, or at least such is true in the cloud cuckoo land of Mr Cottrell.
It’s neither of those things, in my view. I think his meaning is ‘if we repeat it often enough people will believe it, and if people believe it, it must be true.’ Then they can all ‘carry on regardless’, as Messers Rogers and Thomas may have termed it all.
I don’t think the C of E has the capacity for any meaningful change with regard to safeguarding. It’s all window dressing.
Has any of you had to renew your basic C of E safeguarding training lately? If so, how can you be so negative?? The female voice in an unvarying tone tells you that the church has now realised the error of its ways and one of our prime duties as Christians is to treat everyone with respect and be nice to survivors. As I ploughed my way through the room slowly filled up with pink flying pigs. And how anyone can ever be persuaded to be a Parish Safeguarding officer is beyond me! I’m still wondering whether to offer feedback… Read more »
Were there no frequent quizzes, and you had to get 80% right to pass?
You see an adult being harrassed in a pub in an aggressive manner. Should you:
I’m a volunteer trainer for my Diocese. I find face-to-face training gives the opportunities for wider discussion and questions, though the online is useful for those doing refresher or simply cannot make an in person training.
Hello, I hope you didn’t think I was trying to be rude to you and other trainers . I taught and managed safeguarding before I retired, so I find doing the basic level grates somewhat …. I agree with you entirely that face to face training is a great deal better so people can discuss issues and hear other viewpoints . This online version is better in one respect than a previous one where there was a male and female trainer – so the serious parts were always spoken by the ‘daddy’. But it would have been very hard to… Read more »
And herein lies a dilemma. We have the welcome development of greater transparency but, inevitably because of the underlying systemic problems, that just triggers new criticism. It’s hard to see a positive way forwards.
Mundane question: how does it take 2 months to produce minutes?
It doesn’t. But it does take until the next meeting of the House for the minutes to be approved by the House.
Ah, OK. But for often time-sensitive minutes like these, you’d think they could devise a faster system of approval.
Committee structures are often a Jurassic Park. In universities, students are invited to consultative committees which start with laborious reading of terms of reference, approval of minutes and the like: they don’t come back, because (quite reasonably) they assume that a meeting which starts with half an hour of entirely procedural tedium is not one that transacts any serious business. Some I have been to have motions proposed and seconded, which is just absurd in 2025. The approval of minutes at the next meeting is a nonsense. A month or more after the instant meeting, no-one can remember what was… Read more »
I have had PCC members never come to a second meeting after sitting through such business…
Why is it absurd to have motions proposed and seconded?
And why should meetings be litigated, let alone re-litigated? If we get as far as lawsuits something’s gone seriously wrong.
Because a meeting is not a parliamentary debate, and unless your organisation is totally dysfunctional it is neither dealing with motions nor voting on them. Committees should arrive at decisions by consensus. I have sat in meetings in which the approval of minutes is proposed and seconded: that just makes the whole thing look ridiculous.
I used “re-litigated” metaphorically. Notes are taken. Those notes are, in the absence of clear evidence of bias or frank error, the end of it.
Every PCC, board of trustees, and school governors’ meeting of which I have been a part has had motions which are proposed and seconded, and the vote recorded. So does my local Labour branch. The danger of operating on a consensus model is that quieter members can be overlooked, and louder or more dominant members (or the vicar) can be assumed to carry the day. Voting gives everyone an equal chance, and recording the vote makes it obvious when there is significant dissension. The same is true of proposing and seconding approval of the minutes. It’s one small safeguard against… Read more »
I was once advised by my dad that minutes should not reflect what was said, but rather reflect what might have been said had the speaker been given more time to think prior to speaking. There is some sense to that. It may have been civil service practice in the old days. We all wish we could give more thought prior to making ad hoc statements at a meeting (or posting comments on a blog like this). The other view is that meetings have privately sorted out all the issues and actions (and the minutes) prior to the meeting, so… Read more »
And that’s what Hansard does: it smooths the prose. There is a presumption that Hansard is written by disinterested observers, which makes that smoothing acceptable to everyone involved. But the minutes of a meeting are often not verbatim, or even close to verbatim, but are meant to be a high-level summary. The problem is that if it’s not capturing actions, what is it capturing? The idea of minutes (as with Hansard) is to provide a record of the discussion, so that if there is ambiguity in the actions the discussions can be used to resolve them. In the limit, Hansard… Read more »
Minutes have many purposes. Firstly they are a working document recording actions. A good secretary should get them out within 24 hours and seek corrections 24 hours after that. Secondly they are a summary of the preceding meeting and some, quick process of reviewing them can be helpful: it means if someone takes contrary positions in successive meetings it is obvious and they are obliged to explain. Thirdly, in some cases they are a legal record of business if a challenge of misconduct is brought. In such cases, and I think the House of Bishops may be one, formally voting… Read more »
I’m sure that is a correct summary of the legal position. Whilst I am not familiar with C of E standing orders section 248 of the Companies Act 2006 imposes a duty that every company must cause minutes of all proceedings at meetings of its directors to be recorded. Those records must be kept for at least ten years from the date of the meeting. If a company fails to comply with this requirement, an offence is committed by every officer of the company who is in default. The penalty is a fine on scale 3, with a continuing daily… Read more »
I don’t disagree with the good practice, but is the Archbishops’ Council a “company” under the terms of the Companies Act? I don’t think it is. It is a corporation that is declared to exist for charitable purposes, but I don’t think company law applies to it, any more than it does to a PCC (which is also a corporation and a charity).
I think you will find that most auditors/independent financial examiners of church accounts request a copy of the PCC minutes. This allows them to trace large financial transactions and match them with PCC decisions.
As I said, I don’t disagree with the good practice. My quibble was as to whether company law applies. (It clearly does to diocesan boards of finance which are required to be limited companies, as I am reminded whenever I have to make the declarations and statements that auditors require of company directors.)
I did not intend to suggest that the Archbishops’ Council is a ‘company’. As you say, it is a registered charity with a governing document which I freely admit that I have not read.
The Companies Act section 248 requirement, whilst mandatory for ‘every company’, can clearly be considered good practice in other bodies whose governing document may well contain similar provisions. That was certainly true of the Constitution of a music charity of which I was formerly a trustee.
The ABY stated that Many issues were not safeguarding issues but issues of conduct that should be managed through conventional Human Resources processes. I have been questioning the intersection of codes of conduct (CCM) and safeguarding for a few weeks on TA, and Jay also used the term intersection. How do we know where the boundaries are? If it is stealing church funds, then that is not safeguarding but a criminal matter. If it is being a bully, or making derogatory personal comments, or practicing spiritual abuse, then it is definitely safeguarding. Surely any issues of conduct which affect other… Read more »
Bullying of e.g. a colleague is not a safeguarding matter because the colleague is not, in general, a child or vulnerable adult. It’s reprehensible behaviour but it’s not a safeguarding issue per se, unless you suspect that the individual is treating or is likely to treat children or vulnerable adults in the same way. I suppose you could argue that someone engaging in bullying behaviour towards their peers is even more likely to do it to those less able to fight back, but I’m not sure the dynamics of interpersonal relationships would support that. I’ve worked with (for) people who… Read more »
I’m afraid there are many misconceptions here. Safeguarding is not restricted to children, it is for adults too. ‘Vulnerable’ is not a word used in current safeguarding circles, the term is ‘at risk’ and this simply means that some are more at risk than others. Everybody is at risk to some degree.
I refer you to the England Athletics policies, and I understand these have much in common with other sports bodies, and are based on general safeguarding best practices as advised by experts.
https://www.hernehillharriers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Adult-Safeguarding-Policy.pdf_0.pdf
CoE is a million miles from this, if we take AoY seriously.
My most recent training has all been in Scotland, where “vulnerable adults” is very much the terminology used.
From my link above, Scotland has the (Adult Support and Protection Act 2007) The text says: An adult at risk is an individual aged 16 years and over who: a) is unable to safeguard their own wellbeing, property, rights or other interests b) is at risk of harm, and c) because they are affected by disability, mental disorder, illness or physical or mental infirmity, is more vulnerable to being harmed than adults who are not so affected I found the link to the act https://www.gov.scot/publications/adult-support-protection-scotland-act-2007-short-introduction-part-1-act/ This uses the term ‘at risk’. Note also the definition of ‘at harm’. Has this… Read more »
I think you are misreading. The definitions you quote clearly lay out that adults at risk of harm are a subcategory of vulnerable adults. Some guidance now says “protected adults” rather than vulnerable, but the terminology also exists in the title of the disclosure and criminal record check “Protecting Vulnerable Groups” (PVG) scheme.
Can you please point out to me the sentence or paragraph where it says ‘adults at risk of harm are a sub category of vulnerable adults’. I could not find it. I have read the Scotland act again – yesterday I was reading whilst doing my day job, so apologise for any misreads. The section ‘who are adults at risk’ does indeed say that all three conditions need to be met. Harm, as I already quoted, includes ‘psychological harm ( e.g. by causing fear, alarm or distress)’ Looking at the England Care and Support Statutory Guidance 2014 act, section 14 covers safeguarding.… Read more »
There is disagreement on whether or not bullying should be classed as a safeguarding issue. Having seen the widespread and devastating damage even a single bully in a congregation can do, I think it should be regarding as a safeguarding problem. However, bullying is such an endemic problem in the C of E that it may not be practical to ask safeguarding departments to deal with it. The Scottish Episcopal Church may be different, of course – but somehow I don’t think it is.
Looking at the Scotland 2007 act (see above) bullying is clearly a safeguarding issue, in law and in practice. Harm includes:
It’s strange. These bishops talk about the importance of safeguarding, but it seems they have never read the relevant acts. It isn’t difficult.
In England there is the care act (2014) which is too long for me to read right now.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/23/contents
The Church of England, as we know, takes its own path on these matters. And we also know how that turns out.
Exactly. They ignore acts of parliament, and hide under CCM. The arrogance and presumption is breathtaking.
Power and control, power and control.
There may be disagreement, but it is disagreement between those who can read and those who cannot!
There are some who, when faced with clear text and words, somehow go blind. Others refuse to even face it. ABY seems to fall into one of those categories. Maybe most bishops do too.
One issue with safeguarding is the difference between what social care might see as abuse v what church considers a problem. Bullying is an example which for adults not deemed to be vulnerable (adult at risk, protected etc) should be handled by an HR department.
See my detailed response above. Of course, there are levels of abuse, and levels of ‘at risk’, and we should be sensible, but what is not acceptable is for the church to ignore the relevant acts. I hope the charity commission will be robust. If I was bullied at work, I would report it to the HR department initially, and would expect the HR department to investigate in a timely manner and the investigation should be carried out by independent people, maybe from a different part of the company. So, in a church situation, I would expect an investigation to… Read more »
That bullying is bad and requires robust, fair processes is not the same as all bullying being a safeguarding matter.
To be honest the boundaries of safequarding can be a grey area. I was pushing it because I have never seen a discussion on what jay calls the intersection between safeguarding and conduct. I am sure there will be a variety of views. Given the church’s hesitancy to move towards full independent safeguarding, i can envisage the church will try to move the boumdary and maintain full control over ccm. We may also see greater interest by secular authorities. Why should we trust internal ccm when we dont trust internal safeguarding?? In a way the strict legal words are not… Read more »
What ecclesiastical HR department is going to manage a case of bullying by a member of the congregation?