New public database of Church of England’s clergy is to go live in May

Jan 16, 2021 by

by Hattie Williams, Church Times:

THE new National Register of Clergy, which will list the name and ministerial authority of every cleric in the Church of England, is to go live in May.

By 23 February, all 20,000 active clerics in the Church — those who hold a licence or permission to officiate (PTO) — are required by canon law to confirm with both the National Church Institutions (NCIs) and the dioceses that their information is accurate — via a short form on the C of E website.

Currently, PTO and licence details are held in each diocese but not published nationally.

The register was first recommended in the 2017 Gibb review, which investigated the Church’s handling of allegations against the disgraced former Bishop of Gloucester Peter Ball (News, 30 June 2017).

It was later discussed at length at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which was also highly critical of the Church’s lack of record-keeping, particularly regarding clerics with PTO, which, the inquiry concluded, had compromised accountability over safeguarding (News, 10 May 2019).

The inquiry established that there was no public national database for the clergy besides Crockford’s Clerical Directory, which is incomplete, since clerics can opt not to appear in it. Also, records of clerics with current or expired PTO, criminal records, and other concerns kept on file by dioceses had tended to be incomplete, lost, ignored, or blighted by poor record-keeping, IICSA said.

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