The Chair of the Ecclesiastical Judges Association Working Party into Churchyard Memorial Regulations, HH Peter Collier KC, has kindly provided the following explanation of queries raised by the Report

EJA Report: Churchyard Memorial Regulations

I understand that there have been some queries raised about the absence of two documents referred to on p.2 of the Report, and thereafter in more detail, namely a Template Application Form (paras 8.3, 5) and a Template Handbook for the Bereaved (paras 8.57, 61, 73, 75).

The omission was deliberate. The Report and associated documents had been produced by a working party of Ecclesiastical Judges for the use by Chancellors who had been encouraged by the Court of Arches to review their Regulations (see para 1.3 of the Report).

It was our view that the issues involved in making Churchyard Memorial Regulations more up to date and hopefully bringing about greater commonality across dioceses were matters of legitimate interest to the wider church and also to the general public.

The particular two documents which were not published are very much more to do with the nuts and bolts of how those revisions will be put into practice in the dioceses rather than the broader principles lying behind the likely changes of substance. It is likely there will be more variation between dioceses in relation to those nuts and bolts than in relation to substantive changes to the Regulations. It was for that reason that we did not think that wider circulation of those two documents was appropriate at this stage.

Peter Collier

Chair of the Working Party

Comment

The Report was summarized here and reviewed in more detail here. Links to the report, its annexes, and the two documents that make up the draft template are:

• Churchyard Memorials Report v4
• Churchyard Memorials Report – Appendix A – Comparative Table of Diocesan Regulations
• Churchyard Memorials Report – Appendices B-F
• Recommended Template – Additional Matters Order
• Recommended Template – Schedule 1.