Quick links to pages of possible interest to L&RUK readers: Part I – law and policy

On 15 November, the Church of England issued a Press Release announcing the re-launch of its web site. As a consequence of the redesign, the URLs of a number of links used in L&RUK and elsewhere have changed and the old links are no longer active. Below are a number of quick links to pages of interest to ourselves and hopefully to our readers, intended to circumvent endless “scrolling down” or grappling with the “simple navigation, an improved search engine, improved website accessibility”.

The headings below do not exactly reflect the CofE site’s new architecture, but have been selected as areas of greatest interest to readers. The new A Church Near You site will be integrated into the new website when it launches soon, and by the end of January 2018, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York websites will go live.

Media Centre

• Media Centre
• Press Releases

Readers who enter their email into the box entitled “Bring some joy to your inbox”, which is above the “Prayer for the Day” on most pages, will find, inter alia, the sign-up for the highly recommended Daily Media Digest. As before, links to the Digest of items reported by the media are emailed to users of the service.

Policy and Thinking

• Canons 7th edition.
• Church Representation Rules 
• Work of General Synod.
• The Church in Parliament
• Research and Statistics.
• Our Views. 

Worship Texts and Resources

• Book of Common Prayer, (1662)
• Common Worship

Leadership and Governance

The section on Legal Services gives an explanation of the work of  the Legal Office, and includes the following areas:

• Clergy Discipline Information on the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 and how to make a complaint, including Tribunal Decisions. 
• Legislation, Measures, Canons, Secondary/subordinate Legislation, History. Apart from the Canons, supra, these pages rely to a great extent on the external government site http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ which has categories in its efficient search engine for Church Measures and Church Instruments
• Subordinate Legislation, Some subordinate legislation made by the General Synod and/or the House of Bishops does not need to be laid before Parliament. There are links to such legislation which is currently in force.

Safeguarding 

The important section, Safeguarding, includes information on:

• Reporting abuse and finding support
• Policy and practice guidance
• Training
• IICSA

Recent documents include:

• Key roles and responsibilities of church office holders and bodies practice guidance 2017
• Responding to, assessing and managing concerns or allegations against church officers practice guidance, 2017
• Glossary reference document, 2017

Life events parochial fees and guidance

• Parochial Fees

Cathedrals and Church Buildings Link to ChurchCare

• Online Faculty System and Church Heritage Record

This page will be updated and re-issued as new material is transferred to the website. 

David Pocklington