“If doctrine and the law had been on the side of the Petitioners, the Court might well have felt nevertheless that its discretion should not be exercised in such a way as to endorse needless waste of water”

The association between the Chancellor Ockleton’s comment on a potential “needless waste of water” and his refusal on an application for a 940-litre “portable immersion baptistery” have been widely mis-reported in the press and social media. Actually, he stated (at [32]) that “the waste of water was ‘not relevant to the legality of the present proposals, (and presumably trigger Duffield considerations) but one to which the proposal…draws immediate attention'” [32].

The concise summary of the judgment produced by the Ecclesiastical Law Association is reproduced below.

In Re St. Mary Radcliffe-on-Trent [2026] ECC S&N 1, the Petitioners sought authority to purchase (and store) a portable font for baptism by immersion in addition to the existing “traditional font”; it was said that this would “meet a need because of the desire of adult converts to be baptised in this way”. Their Statement of Significance asserted that this did not raise any questions about lasting visual impact, or harm to the significance of the building. Ockelton Ch. challenged this by highlighting the final sentence in the parish’s Statement which asserted: “There is no intention to detract from the significance of the font” [2]. Continue reading →