Sleep outdoors to help those with no choice, says CUF

THE Church Urban Fund is calling on people to take up the Advent Sleepout Challenge by sleeping outside for one night, to raise money for homeless people. Nightshelters currently operating through the charity’s Together programme are funded by money raised by last year’s challenge. In Manchester alone, there will be more than 2100 bed spaces provided in night shelters across nine churches this winter, supported by nearly 19,000 volunteering hours.

www.sleepoutchallenge.org.uk

ALL SAINTS’, BARTON STACEYHelmet of righteousness: when Thomas and Mary Frost were baptised at All Saints’, Barton Stacey, last month, an antique diver’s helmet was used in the font. Their father, Nicholas Frost, is a Royal Navy Diver 

Tribunal finds against Christian over adoption comments

RICHARD PAGE, dismissed as a non-executive director of the Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust over his religious comments on same-sex adoption (News, 1 April 2016), has lost his case for reinstatement. He had claimed at Croydon Employment Tribunal that he had been subject to discrimination, harassment, and victimisation. The Lord Chancellor previously found Mr Page guilty of serious misconduct in the magistracy for telling colleagues in an adoption case that he believed that it was better for children to be brought up by a mother and a father than by a gay couple (News, 23 January 2015).

 DIOCESE OF SALISBURYWanting a pilot: a replica First World War Bristol scout bi-plane was at Salisbury Cathedral for an event by the Forces’ charity SSAFA which marked the centenary of the battle of Passchendaele

C of E gets green light to train more head teachers

THE C of E Professional Qualification for Headship, running now for a year, has been awarded National Professional Qualification status by the Department for Education. The C of E’s Foundation for Educational Leadership will now roll out the training to 300 school leaders around the country over three years, with the help of a grant of £750,000 from the Allchurches Trust. The Chief Education Officer for the Church of England, the Revd Nigel Genders said: “We look forward to sharing our skills and expertise as well as our vision for education.”

Tenth of UK’s Syrian refugees resettled in north-east

THE north-east can “hold its head up” in terms of its response to Syrian refugees, the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Paul Butler, has told ITV News this week, after it was revealed that 895 had been resettled by councils in the region. “What I think is really good is the number who have committed to taking them right the way through the whole five years of the programme — and I would really hope that would be true of every local authority,” he said. To date, the Government has resettled 8319 refugees; it has pledged to take 20,000 by 2020.