THE next Dean of Exeter Cathedral is to be the Very Revd Jonathan Greener, Dean of Wakefield, it was announced on Tuesday.

He succeeds the Very Revd Dr Jonathan Draper, who resigned at the end of August, and will take up the post at the end of November.

At Wakefield, he oversaw a £7.5-million restoration project, and chaired the diocesan board of education. The Bishop of Exeter, the Rt Revd Robert Atwell, said this week that the Dean had “a strong track record of running a cathedral, of fund-raising, and of re-ordering its interior imaginatively”.

In 2015, Dean Greener praised the “mini-MBA” training offered to deans under Renewal and Reform (Letters, 10 April 2015). His wife, Pamela, composed a song pleading with the Chancellor at the time, George Osborne, to abandon plans to end VAT relief on repairs to historic buildings (News, 27 April 2015).

Before his ten years at Wakefield, Dean Greener was Archdeacon of Pontefract. After training for the priesthood at Mirfield, he served his first curacy in Southwark, held an incumbency in Brighton, and was the Bishop’s Chaplain in Truro from 1994 to 1996. He is an executive member of the Association of English Cathedrals and a Church Commissioner.

A Visitation by Bishop Atwell, completed in January last year, concluded by calling for a culture change at Exeter Cathedral, particularly in relation to the Deanin the pastoral care of the cathedral community (News, 23 September 2016).