The Diocese of Oxford has issued the following Press Release on the replacement of the Online Faculty System with the Buildings Management Portal. Whilst the Diocesan Church Buildings Teams will be helping parishes navigate the transition locally, the system itself is being delivered and managed nationally rather than by the Dioceses.
Buildings Management Portal – replacing the Online Faculty System
The online process for applications to make changes to your church building is now easier and more intuitive – thanks to the launch of a new portal! This autumn will see the introduction of the new national Buildings Management Portal (BMP), which will replace the existing Online Faculty System (OFS). The Portal is a Church of England national project and will be used by dioceses across the country. Whilst the Church Buildings Team will be helping parishes navigate the transition locally, the system itself is being delivered and managed nationally rather than by the Diocese. The new Portal is due to launch on the 6th October 2026. The Church Buildings Team will be hosting several online drop in sessions for any questions you may have on the new portal, please find the links to register below.
All ongoing and historic cases have been transferred into the Building Management Portal without the need for resubmission. The new system is intended to make it easier to navigate the process and have other improvements such as autosaving information entered and easier uploading of documents.
There will be a short transition period, currently expected to be around eight days, during which neither OFS nor the new Portal will be available while data is transferred between systems.
This Online Faculty system will become read only from 5pm on the 28th of September, with the new system launching the following week.
Comments
See Comment of Matthew Clements here.
Sadly, it appears that no changes will be made to the previously available functionality for List A work. Currently there is a text box of just 100 characters for users to enter details of List A work. I suggested some changes a while ago and I am told that these might be considered for later releases.
From my IT experience, I would have thought that a title (say, 20 characters) with a linked text box and possibly a field for the date would have been quite cheap but very useful. As it stands, for example, there is no clue how one would find any particular List A record raised without going through all of the text boxes. Moreover, the teaching video they have produced suggests that the DAC will be able to check our List A work to make sure that we have not done List B work under the guise of List A! So the only benefit of the new system in respect of List A work is the DAC. In consequence I will not use the List A part of the BMP at all (as at present).
Thanks. I have added a link to your Comments on the post…dp