A NEW approach to outsourcing church safeguarding to an independent body was endorsed overwhelmingly by the General Synod on Wednesday afternoon.

Despite some speeches that called for a greater sense of urgency, or urged the Synod to revisit the idea rejected last year of also moving diocesan safeguarding teams to a new external organisation, members overall welcomed the latest thinking on independent safeguarding.

Dame Christine Ryan, the independent chair of the Safeguarding Structures Programme Board, which is piloting this work, said that, after months of conversations and consultation, it had become clear to her that the Church of England was “ready to change” and had a “deep commitment” to doing “what was right”. Nevertheless, actual change was happening far too slowly, she concluded.

Regulators, Parliament, and the public would no longer tolerate incremental improvements, she warned. She had, therefore, drawn up a new model for independent safeguarding which would simplify matters, restore trust, and end the “invidious” situation in which the Church acted as both “pastor and judge” in safeguarding cases.

A single independent national charity, provisionally titled the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), would be created, she said. Its governing board would have a majority of independent non-church members. As an extra layer of impartiality, its chief safeguarding officer’s operational decisions would be accountable solely not to the board, but to an external regulatory body.

A new uniform complaints process would be rolled out across every diocese, and an ombudsman would provide a final route of appeal for handling complaints that could not be resolved locally.

Local diocesan and cathedral safeguarding teams would not become employees of the ISA (as the National Safeguarding Team would), but would rely on the ISA for guidance, resources, training, and support.

All of this could begin to change the culture, Dame Christine said. “My ask today is simple: endorse this direction of travel,” she concluded. “The cost of delayed action will be measured in the harm that it enables.”

The Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, Dr Joanne Grenfell, who is the lead bishop for safeguarding, acknowledged that this latest model was different from what the Synod had approved 12 months earlier, but she said that it was both simpler and quicker to implement, while also “squaring the circle” of retaining embedded local safeguarding teams while increasing independence.

Most members spoke warmly of the new approach and urged that it be progressed speedily towards legislation. The Bishop of Tewkesbury, the Rt Revd Robert Springett, the deputy lead bishop for safeguarding, said that this would deliver the core requirement: to stop the Church from “marking its own homework”.

Other speakers praised Dame Christine’s approach to simplifying complexity and recognising the benefits of local expertise.

The Revd Will Harwood (Truro), who described himself as a survivor of church-based abuse, urged members to carry the motion endorsing the new model. It was vital, he said, for the Church to integrate survivors’ voices fully into its work: “God draws near to the broken-hearted, will we do the same?”

The Archbishop of Canterbury also backed the motion, she said, to break through what had seemed to be “intractable”. This sensible new approach could be “delivered at speed”, blending independence of decision-making with trustees’ legal responsibilities. But this was just the “next step” on the Church’s safeguarding journey, she warned: “Earning people’s trust inside and outside the Church will take more than just one motion.”

Alison Coulter (Winchester) said that she and other members of the Archbishops’ Council had been forced into painfully confronting their failures on safeguarding independence in recent years. “It has been humbling, and very clear we need to do better,” she said.

Besides paying tribute to the victims and survivors who sat on the safeguarding-structures board with her, she also told the Synod that the parliamentary Ecclesiastical Committee was closely following its deliberations and urging a greater sense of urgency.

There was an attempt, through amendments, to impose a deadline of July 2027 to bring to the Synod legislation to implement this model, and also to reopen the idea of transferring local safeguarding teams to the ISA.

Robert Zampetti (London), who moved both amendments, argued that the Church too often “talked a good talk” but failed to deliver on its good intentions. A fixed deadline would hold its feet to the fire.

Dr Grenfell persuaded the Synod to reject this, however, arguing that it was unnecessary and imposed excessive inflexibility on the working group, which was actually seeking to return with legislation before July 2027, anyway.

Mr Zampetti’s second amendment on preparing plans to outsource diocesan safeguarding also fell after Dr Grenfell argued that this would distract her team from focusing all its efforts on implementing the advice of their independent safeguarding experts.

This argument was echoed by the Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Philip North, who had steered the Synod with his own amendment last February into rejecting a model that outsourced local as well as national safeguarding teams.

The unamended motion was carried by 345-1, with three recorded abstentions.