At its General Synod this week, the Church of England faced what one member of Parliament had called “a watershed moment for the church to change its culture and its approach to safeguarding.”
Gathered in Westminster, a few minutes’ walk from the Houses of Parliament, the church’s governing body was given the option to outsource abuse response by dioceses and cathedrals to a new independent body.
Abuse survivors and several bishops supported the proposal and argued that new systems were necessary to restore trust in the wake of an onslaught of abuse revelations in the church.
“We need to send a very clear signal to … Parliament and to the public that we are serious about change,” said Robert Thompson, a London priest.
In the end, though, members voted to delay the move, calling for more work to be done on the legal and practical requirements of shifting operations outside the church.
“Survivors are devastated,” Jane Chevous, the cofounder of advocacy organization Survivors Voices, wrote online. “We feel betrayed by the church, who again have not listened to us. Trust is not restored but further broken.”
Wednesday’s vote came as the Church of England has been engulfed in scandal and suspicion over its handling of abuse.
A bombshell November 2024 report detailed abuse perpetrated by an evangelical lay preacher, John Smyth, and cover-up dating back decades. It ultimately resulted in the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Members of Parliament were outraged; church leaders warned that the church was losing trust and confidence.
Other high-profile cases compounded the concerns: a BBC investigation into Blackburn Cathedral, where the church paid a six-figure sum to remove a member of the clergy assessed as a risk to children and young people, and reports of a vicar who continued to minister despite getting banned in the 1980s for sexual misconduct.
Channel 4, one of the UK’s main TV stations, has been broadcasting a series of exposés; last month, the Bishop of Liverpool stepped down after being the subject of sexual-assault and harassment allegations, which he strenuously denies.
In the UK, safeguarding has become an established term in the public, charitable, and faith sectors, legally defined as the protection and support of children and vulnerable adults who have been abused or are at risk of abuse.
The Church of England also uses safeguarding to refer to “acting in ways that mitigate any risk of harm” and has expanded its resources devoted to preventing abuse and responding to allegations.
The church expects each parish to have a safeguarding officer and every diocese to employ professional safeguarding staff, and the Church of England also has a National Safeguarding Team based in London. Safeguarding training is required not only for clergy but also for laypeople with certain roles in the church.
The proposal up for vote on Wednesday would have transferred the safeguarding staff from each cathedral and diocese—currently functioning as 85 separate charities—to be employed by a new independent safeguarding body.
This proposal followed a review of the Church of England’s safeguarding by professor Alexis Jay, the chair of the UK’s national Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
Jay concluded that the church’s provision, with patchy practice across the country, fell below the standards found in secular organization. Moving oversight of abuse response to an external body was also expected to address real or perceived conflicts of interest since those reporting abuse may worry that the response from the church will be compromised by loyalty to the institution.
The vote failed, but members did agree to transfer the National Safeguarding Team to an external body. This team, employed at the church’s national headquarters, handles complex abuse cases or those involving senior leaders, including bishops. The national team also develops safeguarding policy and supports operations at the local level in dioceses and cathedrals.
Lesley-Anne Ryder, a leader from the health and charity sectors who cochaired the group that proposed the new model, told the church that it had “created structures which confuse people and cause suspicion.” She urged church leaders to draw on the expertise of those outside their walls.
Some fear that the decision to delay full independence for safeguarding officials will only deepen suspicion. Others believe that the structural changes of outsourcing—something believed to be untested in any other charitable organization—could hurt morale and processes.
Ahead of the vote, more than 100 safeguarding officers based in dioceses wrote a letter arguing that the model could be “inherently less safe” by creating “additional barriers to communication and cooperation.”
Legal advice published by the Diocese of Gloucester warned that outsourcing safeguarding raised difficult questions about where liability for failures would lie: What would happen if the new independent body failed to deliver?
During the debate this week, some of those speaking against outsourcing shared cautionary tales about outsourcing from their work in secular organizations.
The Church of England continues to work on further reform around safeguarding structures, policies, and practice—a complex undertaking likely to attract less media attention.
As the Church of England prepares to identify its next Archbishop of Canterbury, safeguarding remains at the center of the church’s deliberations, with many braced for further allegations of abuse to emerge. Speaking during another debate this week, one evangelical member of the synod, Ros Clarke, suggested that those who had “failed to uphold safeguarding protocols previously or are unable to articulate an appropriate response to questions on safeguarding matters” were “utterly unsuitable for senior appointments within our church.”
