Faculty
Permission granted by the Consistory Court of a Church of England diocese for alterations to a church building, its contents, or churchyard. The faculty jurisdiction is the ecclesiastical equivalent of planning permission and applies to all Church of England churches, whether listed or not.
Independent editorial summary — not the official statute text. Read the official version on legislation.gov.uk.
Each Church of England diocese has its own consistory court (called the commissary court in the diocese of Canterbury), which exercises control over changes to consecrated church land and buildings. The consistory court issues 'faculties' which are permissions authorising physical and other changes to buildings and land which are 'consecrated' — that is, set aside for the worship and service of God by a legal act known as 'consecration'. A faculty is required for the great majority of works to a church, its contents, or its churchyard, running in parallel with, and independently of, the secular planning system.
Not every minor change needs a faculty. The Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2015 set out a category of routine or low-impact works that can be carried out without one: Part 3 and Schedule 1 make provision for certain matters within the jurisdiction of consistory courts to be undertaken without a faculty, subject to conditions and, in some cases, prior notice to the archdeacon. Anything falling outside those exempted categories must go before the Diocesan Advisory Committee and, ultimately, the chancellor sitting in the consistory court.
Because faculty jurisdiction covers the physical fabric of around 16,000 parish churches — a large proportion of them listed buildings — it operates as a distinct, church-specific counterpart to listed building consent, administered by ecclesiastical rather than civil courts.
Example
A parish wishing to install a new heating system, reorder pews, or erect a memorial in the churchyard will normally need to apply to the Diocesan Advisory Committee and obtain a faculty from the consistory court before work begins.
Related terms
Official sources
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