¹ Hill, M, Ecclesiastical Law (2nd edn, Oxford University Press, 2001) p 45, para 3.04.Google Scholar

² See the Synodical Government Measure 1969, Sch 3. The rules have been the subject of many subsequent amendments, the latest being those effected by the Synodical Government (Amendment) Measure 2003, s 1(2), Schedule, and by the Church Representation Rules (Amendment) Resolution 2003 (‘the 2004 Amendment Resolution’), S1 2004/1889. The resolution was passed by General Synod pursuant to the enabling power contained in the Synodical Government Measure 1969, s 7(1). All references in this article to rules are to the CRR in their currently amended form. The latest edition published by Church House Publishing contains the Rules as at 1 January 2006: ISBN 0 7151 1012 8.Google Scholar

³ The church electoral roll is not to be confused with the electoral register maintained by local authorities and listing those entitled to vote in parliamentary and local government elections.Google Scholar

⁴ This rule is quite specific, concluding ‘and no other person shall be so entitled’. Contrast the annual meeting of parishioners (formerly often known as the ‘vestry meeting’) to elect churchwardens, which commonly is held immediately before the annual parochial church meeting: in addition to those whose names are entered on the church electoral roll, persons resident in the parish whose names are on the register of local government electors by reason of such residence are entitled to attend this meeting: Churchwardens Measure 2001, s 5(1).Google Scholar

⁵ A person whose name is removed from the roll under CRR, r 1(9), ceases to be a member of the PCC on the date on which his name is removed: r 14(3)(a).Google Scholar

⁶ In some dioceses the number of names on the electoral roll is one of the factors taken into account in determining the amount that a parish should pay as its ‘parish share’ or ‘diocesan quota’. However, since some people whose names are on the roll rarely attend the church for worship (see n 33 below), account may also be taken (among other factors) of ‘average weekly Sunday attendance’, based on a count of those attending services over, say, a four-week period.Google Scholar

⁷ Persons co-opted to the deanery synod under r 24(7), who must be actual communicants of 16 years or upwards but who are not required by this rule to be on an electoral roll, are specifically excluded from voting in diocesan synod and General Synod elections: rr 31(3), 35(3)(a).Google Scholar

⁸ Or, alternatively, on the community roll or, in the case of Westminster Abbey, St George's Chapel, Windsor and the cathedral church of Christ Church in Oxford declared by the dean to be an habitual worshipper at the cathedral church: r 31(3) (as amended by the 2004 Amendment Resolution, para 10). A community roll is the roll of lay members of the cathedral community (not also a parish church) required to be kept under the Cathedrals Measure 1999, s 9(3). If the cathedral is also a parish church, it is required to have a church electoral roll pursuant to CRR, r 1(1).Google Scholar

⁹ Again, in the case of a cathedral which is not a parish church, there is the alternative of entry on the community roll or, in the case of Westminster Abbey, St George's Chapel, Windsor, or Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, a declaration by the dean that the person is an habitual worshipper: CRR, r 37(1)(c) (as amended by the 2004 Amendment Resolution, para 13(b)).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Churchwardens Measure 2001, s 1(3)(a). The bishop may permit a person to hold office as churchwarden whose name is not on the roll if it appears to him that there are exceptional circumstances justifying a departure from this requirement, but any such permission is limited to the period of office next following the date on which permission is given: s 1(4).Google Scholar

¹¹ Revised Canons Ecclesiastical, Canon E 2, para 2; CRR, r 10(2).Google Scholar

¹² Marriage Act 1949, s 12(1).Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid, s 6(1). Where, pursuant to a pastoral scheme under the Pastoral Measure 1983, a number of parishes are in the area of a single benefice, the diocesan bishop may direct that the banns of marriage of persons entitled to be married in one of the constituent parish churches may be published in the parish churches of the other parishes in the benefice. In such a case, the marriage may be solemnised in the church in which banns have been published pursuant to such a direction as well as in the parish church of the parish where one of them resides or is on the electoral roll: Pastoral Measure 1983, Sch 3, para 14(4), applying the Marriage Act 1949, s 23. The effect is that if someone living in parish A, or on the electoral roll of parish A, wishes to be married in the parish church of parish B (in the same benefice), but he or she is not on the electoral roll of parish B, he/she may do so provided that the banns of marriage are read (on all three Sundays) in parish B.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Marriage Act 1949, s 6(4).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Marriage Act 1949, s 72(1). This provision also applies to marriage by common licence, where, pursuant to s 15(1)(b), and as an alternative to satisfying the 15-day residence qualification, the parties wish to be married in a parish church or authorised chapel which is their ‘usual place of worship’ (or the usual place of worship of one of them).Google Scholar

¹⁶ A parishioner, and anyone dying in the parish, has such a right, whether or not a member of the Church of England.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure 1976, s 6(1). The right is conditional on there being sufficient space for further burials.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2000, r 16(1), (2)(a). In Re St Michael and All Angels, Tettenhall Regis [1995] Fam 179 at 184, [1996] 1 All ER 231 at 235, 236, Lichfield Cons Ct, the chancellor, Judge John Shand, declined to accede to a late application to strike out the name of a party opponent on the ground that he was neither resident in, nor on the electoral roll of, the parish of Tettenhall, preferring instead to ‘ignore’ his views, which the chancellor described as ‘hysterical defamation of everybody in his sights’, including the incumbent and ‘even his wife’.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Note that it is only lay persons who are entitled to have their names entered on the electoral roll. This is emphasised by CRR, r 1(9)(b), which requires a person's name to be removed from the roll if he ‘becomes a clerk in Holy Orders’. (The author is aware of one rural parish in East Anglia where a non-stipendiary priest, who is also a retired circuit judge, had his name on the roll.)Google Scholar

²⁰ Until the amendments made by the Church Representation Rules (Amendment) Resolution 1980, SI 1980/178, the qualifying age was 17 years. Contrast the age for entry on an electoral register, which currently is still 18 years.Google Scholar

²¹ The prescribed form, as set out in CRR, App I, s 1, is obtainable from Church House Publishing as form SGI. The prescribed ‘Notes’ are set out on the back, together with a note explaining the purpose of the electoral roll.Google Scholar

²² As well as providing his full name and address, the form requires the applicant for enrolment to declare that he is baptised and aged 16 or over (alternatively, to state the date during the next 12 months when he will become 16), and to make one of the three declarations set out in r 1(2)(a), (b) and (c).Google Scholar

²³ The electoral roll officer is the person the PCC is required to appoint ‘to act under its direction for the purpose of carrying out its functions with regard to the electoral roll’: r 1(7).Google Scholar

²⁴ Subject to the proviso in r 1(2) whereby a person shortly to become 16 may be enrolled with effect from the date of his birthday.Google Scholar

²⁵ Hill, Ecclesiastical Law, para 3.04.Google Scholar

²⁶ In effect, baptism constitutes entry into the universal Christian church family, rather than membership of a particular Church. Cf the words used by the minister after baptising a child: ‘We receive this Child into the congregation of Christ's flock’ (Book of Common Prayer) or ‘May God, who has received you by baptism into his Churchhellip’ (Common Worship). This is emphasised by the subsequent words of welcome spoken by the congregation: ‘We welcome you into the fellowship of faith: we are children of the same heavenly Father; we welcome you.’ Likewise, confirmation does not make the candidate a member of the Church of England: rather it is the service in which those who are baptised have their Christian faith confirmed by the laying on of hands by the bishop, and are commissioned, inter alia, to serve Christ and proclaim his gospel.Google Scholar

²⁷ He may, of course, be unaware of the parochial boundaries. Confusion may arise where the boundaries of the ecclesiastical parish are not coincidental with those of the civil parish.Google Scholar

²⁸ The obligation is not very onerous: see n 32 below.Google Scholar

²⁹ The Chambers Dictionary (9th edn, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2003) p 665.Google Scholar

³⁰ New Penguin English Dictionary (Penguin Books, 2000) p 625.Google Scholar

³¹ Cf CRR, r 6(3)(c), whereby a clerk in Holy Orders, not resident in the parish and not beneficed or licensed to any other parish, is entitled to attend the APCM and take part in its proceedings if ‘the parochial church council with the concurrence of the minister has declared him to be an habitual worshipper in the parish.’ The clergy, it would appear, are not to be trusted to self-certify!Google Scholar

³² Cf Canon B 15, para 1, which states that it is ‘the duty of all who have been confirmed to receive the Holy Communion regularly, and especially at the festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun or Pentecost.’ Being a communicant, however, is to be distinguished from being an habitual attender at public worship. This is clear from the provisions in the CRR that require a lay representative on a PCC, deanery synod, diocesan synod or General Synod to be ‘an actual communicant as defined in rule 54(1)’ as well as having his name on the electoral roll. Rule 54(1) defines actual communicant as ‘a person who has received communion according to the use of the Church of England or of a Church in communion with the Church of England at least three times during the twelve months preceding the date of his election or appointment being a person whose name is on the roll of a parish’.Google Scholar

³³ But if a person lives in the parish and is otherwise qualified for enrolment, he is entitled to be enrolled even if he never attends the church for worship. The Bridge Report, Synodical Government in the Church of England: A Review, GS 1252 (Church House Publishing, 1997) had sympathy with but rejected suggestions that eligibility for enrolment should be amended to require some defined level of commitment to the local church: see paras 4.5 to 4.10.Google Scholar

³⁴ Eg whether a person was ‘an habitual drunkard’ so as to enable a magistrates’ court to make a matrimonial order against him in favour of the other spouse to a marriage: see the Matrimonial Proceedings (Magistrates' Courts) Act 1960, ss 1(1)(f), 16(1), considered in Hall v Hall [1962] 2 All ER 129, [1962] I WLR 478, and Hall v Hall [1962] 3 All ER 518, [1962] I WLR 1246, CA. In Re S (A Minor) (Custoday: Habitual Residence) [1998] AC 750, [1997] 4 All ER 251, HL, the issue was whether a child was ‘habitually resident in England and Wales’ within the meaning of the Family Law Act 1986, s 3(1)(a), so as to confer jurisdiction on the English High Court to make an interim care order. More recently, in Mark v Mark [2006] 1 AC 98, [2005] 3 All ER 912, HL, a case concerned with whether the English court had jurisdiction to entertain a wife's divorce petition, Baroness Hale of Richmond said that while a person can have only one domicile, ‘habitual residence may have a different meaning in different statutes according to their context and purpose’ (at p 106 and at p 920).Google ScholarIn an ecclesiastical law context, Hylton-Foster Ch, in ruling that a tabernacle on the communion table was an illegal ornament, referred to the fact that the sacred elements were previously reserved in an aumbry in the north wall, but that since the installation of the tabernacle ‘it has been habitually used for reservation in place of the aumbry’: Re St Mary, Tyne Dock [1954] p 369 at 375, [1954] 2 All ER 339 at 342, Durham Cons Ct. From the author's research, the phrase ‘habitually attend’ appears to have been used in only one reported case. namely Docker's Labour Club and Instituted Ltd v Race Relations Board [1976] AC 285, [1974] 3 All ER 592, HL. The issue there was whether the appellant club had unlawfully refused to sell drinks to a member of another club, and thus an associate member, on the ground of his colour. This depended on whether associate members were ‘a section of the public’ within the meaning of the Race Relations Act 1968, s 2(1). In holding they were not, Lord Reid added: ‘I would reserve my opinion about a case when so many non-members habitually attend that the club loses its character of a private meeting place’ (at 292 and at 595).Google Scholar

³⁵ Where a person's name is removed from the roll under this paragraph, CRR, r 3(2), states that ‘notice of that fact shall, wherever possible’ be sent by the PCC to the PCC of the parish where the person is now resident. It is questionable to what extent this provision, with its obvious concern for pastoral continuity, is observed in practice.Google Scholar

³⁶ Note the wording of r 1(9): ‘hellipa person's name shall, as the occasion arises, be removed from the roll’.Google Scholar

³⁷ Such a person would not fall to have his name removed under r 1(9)(f) since, having made the required declaration, he was ‘entitled to have his name entered on the roll at the time when it was entered’.Google Scholar

³⁸ ‘Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing’: Hebrews 10:25 (New International Version). The regular meeting together for worship of Christ's faithful people is also a powerful witness to the fospel and a means of church growth: Acts 2:44–47.Google Scholar

³⁹ Some relaxation might be required for a small rural parish with only infrequent services.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ It is of interest to note that non-resident couples wishing to marry at St Mary's Church, Orchardleigh, in Somerset (a church romantically set on an island in the grounds of Orchardleigh House, recently refurbished as a wedding reception venue), many of whom live a ling distance away, make the effort to attend worship once a month for six months so as to entitle them to be enrolled and thus have their banns read and be married in the church. Often they comprise the majority of the congregation. Orchardleigh Church featured in the BBC2 programme A Passion for Churches on 8 February 2006, when it emerged that the church will host no fewer than 65 weddings in 2006. The new rector, initially concerned at feeling ‘swamped’, now sees the weddings as a pastoral opportunity.Google Scholar

⁴¹ The ‘electoral college’ for the purposes of elections to the diocesan synod or General Synod (see p 439 above).Google Scholar

⁴² The panel appointed to decide the appeal may extend the time for giving notice: CRR, r 45(c). It follows that the lay chairman of the deanery synod should refer any notice of appeal he receives to the bishop's council and cannot summarily reject one that appears to be out of time.Google Scholar

⁴³ CRR, r 43(4). Rule 2(3) requires such publication (by exhibition on or near the principal door of the parish church) for a period of not less than fourteen days before the APCM.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ CRR, r 45(a). This was also the wording of the former rule: Representation of the Laity Measure 1929, Schedule, r 18(4)).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Regardless of this provision, it could be argued that the panel would be obliged, in any event, to afford the parties the right to a hearing, in compliance with Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as scheduled to the Human Rights Act 1998: ‘In the determination of his civil rights hellip everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law.’ Arguably, the fundamental right to be able to take part in the church's democratic processes is a ‘civil right’ within the article. It would follow that the parties (or one of them) could insist on a public hearing. It is suggested that Article 6 rights apply in such circumstances notwithstanding that in Aston Cantlow and Wilmcote with Billesley Parochial Church Council v Wallbank [2003] UKHL 37, [2004] 1 AC 546, [2003] 3 All ER 1213, the House of Lords held that a PCC is not a ‘public authority’ for the purposes of the Human Rights Act 1998, s 6.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See, however, the discussion below of the case of Stuart v Haughley Parochial Church Council. Cf the position of a planning inspector, appointed by the minister to decide an appeal against the refusal of planning permission by the local planning authority, whose decision to dismiss the appeal is challenged by the developer in the High Court under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 s 288. In such a case, RSC Ord 94, r 2(2)(d) (as scheduled to the Civil Procedure Rules 1998) requires the claim form to be served on both the minister and the authority. Both may appear to defend the decision, though in practice the local authority usually leaves it to the minister. Indeed, if the authority appears as well, it will generally have to bear its own costs: see the principles set out in Bolton Metropolitan District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment [1996] 1 All ER 184, [1995] 1 WLR 1176, HL.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Stuart v Haughley Parochial Church Council [1935] Ch 452 (Bennett J): [1936] Ch 32, CA.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The ERO acts under its direction: see n 23 above.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ This was the body constituted by the diocesan conference to decide such appeals: Rules for the Representation of the Laity, r 18(3). Cf now the ad hoc panel appointed under CRR, r 43(5).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ From this it is to be inferred (though it is not stated in the two law reports) that those whose names had been removed were all resident in the parish.Google Scholar

⁵¹ See n 33 above.Google Scholar

⁵² Cf CRR r 53(1)(b) which empowers the bishop ‘to appoint a person to do any act in respect of which there has been any neglect or default on the part of any person or body charged with any duty under these rules.’Google Scholar

⁵³ Mr Stuart had brought his action in the Chancery Division.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Maclean v The Workers' Union [1929] 1 Ch 602.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ The other appeal judges, who concurred, were Romer and Maugham LJJ.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Stuart v Haughley Parochial Church Council [1936] Ch 32. CA, at pp 40–41.Google ScholarDespite these comments, the vicar remained unrepentant. Over twenty years later he was still arguing in the church magazine that the bishop had acted ‘dishonestly’ in drawing up and signing the supplementary electoral roll, which he had then ‘ordered’ the rural dean to affix to the church door, and that ‘Perjury deceived the Judge’: In the Cause of Truth – the Magazine of the Church of St Mary, Haughley, 17 April 1956, p 6. (The Author is grateful to the Revd Canon Deirdre Parmenter, the present Rector of Haughley with Wetherden and Stowupland for providing a copy of this magazine.)Google Scholar

⁵⁷ It is the only case that the author has found in the Law Reports.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Ibid, p 36.

⁵⁹ Ibid, p 39. Under the present rules, however, a panel would now be required to offer the parties an oral hearing: CRR, r 45(b). See also n 45 above.

⁶⁰ As opposed (as in Stuart v Haughley Parochial Church Council) to an action to enforce rights already established.Google Scholar

⁶¹ That the secular courts will intervene in an appropriate case was emphasised by the recent decision of the House of Lords in Percy v Board of National Mission of Scotland [2005] UKHL 73, [2006] 2 WLR 353. See the article by Frank Cranmer and Scot Peterson on p 392 of this Issue and in particular the comments of Baroness Hale quoted on p 398.Google Scholar

⁶² The amendment substitued ‘2007’ for ‘1990’ in CRR, r 2(4). Under that rule, before amendment, a new roll was to be prepared ‘in the year 1990 and every succeeding sixth year’. The effect of the amendment is to bring forward by one year the date for preparation of the next new roll. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that at least every other round of the triennial elections to deanery synods (next due in 2008) will take place on the basis of up-to-date electoral rolls. See the Revision Committee Report, GS 1484–7Y, paras 79–82Google Scholar, and the General Synod Report of Proceedings, Vol 35, No 1, p 76 (10 02 2004).Google Scholar

⁶³ This obligation does not apply with respect to any person whose name could be removed from the previous roll under r 1(9).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ See n 21 above.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ The opportunity could also be taken to correct the numerous errors in the statutory text highlighted in the footnotes to the 2006 edition of the Rules published by Church House Publishing (see n 2 above).Google Scholar

⁶⁶ An extract from the note ‘What is the Church Electoral Roll?’ printed on the back of form SGI.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Aston Cantlow and Wilmcote with Billesley PCC v Wallbank [2004] 1 AC 546 at 555, [2003] 3 All ER 1213 at 1219, HL, per Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead.Google Scholar