TRUST, it is sometimes said, takes years to build, seconds to break, and for ever to repair. The publication of the final report of the four-year Trust and Trustworthiness project this week, to be discussed by the General Synod this month, says that rebuilding trust in the Church of England requires nothing less than “broad, deep, and sustained” culture change. It pulls no punches. Professor Veronica Hope Hailey, the author of the research report, found that the Church’s distinctive structures, culture, and patterns of authority were all sources of difficulty. Key concerns include ambiguity in authority, weak accountability, fragmented governance, and unhelpful patterns of behaviour. “Clerical accountability must be vigorously tackled,” she writes. “It’s not simply about formal control but also the need to change the culture of individualism some clergy seem to think they deserve.” Equally uncomfortable reading will be her finding that a blame culture has developed: “In the interviews it was always someone else’s fault.”

In July 2024, when the Synod last debated trust — informed by an earlier iteration of Professor Hope Hailey’s findings — the long debate that followed (and overran the time allotted) was dominated by divisions over the Prayers of Love and Faith. Since then, the Church has been shaken by the Makin report, the resignation of an Archbishop of Canterbury, and the fraught process of overhauling the structures underpinning safeguarding. Given the pointedness of Professor Hope Hailey’s conclusions, it seems likely that the issue will be no less hotly debated this time.

Rebuilding trust requires culture change, and culture change requires leadership. But expectations need to be managed. As the UK is about to discover, a change of leader is no magic wand. Andy Burnham (deemed the most likely successor to Sir Keir Starmer) is not, as one Tory MP quipped when Mr Burnham took his seat in the House of Commons, the Messiah; nor is he going to turn water into wine, as another suggested. Both Archbishops are aware of the scale of the problems facing the Church. The Archbishop of York spoke only this week, albeit in another context, of trust in public institutions being at a particularly low ebb. He and the Archbishop of Canterbury have, at different times, both criticised the Church’s structures of accountability, and Archbishop Mullally has compared them unfavourably with those of the NHS (Comment, 10 February 2025). Each has spoken of the pernicious undermining of trust through social media. A strong lead from the top is essential, but it is only the starting point for profound transformation. The Church of England has no single governing body to require change. Archbishop Mullally has limited tools at her disposal. Like Mr Burnham, she is most likely to succeed if she works collaboratively and listens to critical voices. Accountability, Professor Hope Hailey concludes, is the key issue for the Church to tackle and should not be a matter for protracted debate. It is to be hoped that the Church as a whole is listening.