Church Council update - March 2023

The meeting was held in the Parish Hall and began with a reflection on Ephesians 3:14-21 led by Marie Gray.

We then discussed a report and recommendation from the Buildings Development Group (“BDG”) on progressing our plans for the Parish Hall. The City Council planning department had previously responded negatively to a “pre-application” for replacing the parish hall with a new two-storey building. They were particularly concerned about to design quality and heritage aspects. We therefore appointed our own heritage consultant to prepare a report. Although this will be useful in due course, it did not provide enough evidence to directly challenge the council view.  The BDG therefore recommended to the meeting that we commission our architect to modify the design of the new building to seek to address the council’s concerns. The revised design would then be put back to the council. The fee estimate was for an initial spend of £3,400 for a modified design with a further £7,800 (both exclusive of VAT) to develop the design and submit a formal planning application, if it progressed to that stage. After discussion, the PCC unanimously agreed this proposal.

The next item related to developments regarding the CofE proposals over the blessing of same-sex relationships. Dan had circulated a paper prior to the meeting with various ideas as to how those in the church who wanted to engage in the debate might be helped to do so. He asked for the PCC’s views and will take the comments made into consideration when devising the way forward.  

Other items included:

• a proposal (unanimously agreed) to pay for 3-5 hours admin support for Dan In order to help him in developing the new shared leadership model that had been discussed previously, 
  
• A  safeguarding scenario (there is one of these at most meetings), and
  
• the formal adoption of various reports as is required before they are presented to the Annual Church Meeting (“APCM”) (to be held after church on Sunday 23rd April). These reports will be available to all church members before and at the APCM.

As usual, we ended in prayer.