Bishop Joanne Grenfell, the Church’s safeguarding lead, had put forward a motion to the General Synod for a new model which would have seen all Church-employed safeguarding officers transferred to a new independent body.
The bishop said victims and survivors of abuse – some of whom had gathered outside the venue ahead of Tuesday’s debate urging Synod members to vote for fully independent safeguarding – felt they had not been listened to.
The Church of England cannot hide behind the complexities of moving to fully independent safeguarding and must realise the “nation is watching”, a leading bishop has said.
Bishop of Blackburn Philip North, who proposed the amendment to endorse the less independent option while work was done to see if the other one was “legally deliverable”, described the latter as “eye-wateringly complex” and said it could take years to implement.
She said while members had “heard the complexity of doing this, and they wanted further assurance about the governance responsibilities around that”, they had not “heard strongly enough that the nation is watching and that victims and survivors say that this is what they need to restore trust and confidence”.
