Church of England court fees from January 2027

If you have never had to read a Church of England fees order before, you are not alone. But this one matters. The Order published on legislation.gov.uk sets out who pays when judges, registrars and other legal officers do work in the Church’s courts and tribunals. It was made on 11 July 2026, laid before Parliament on 31 July 2026 and comes into force on 1 January 2027. That may sound like narrow legal housekeeping, yet the rules reach into real decisions about church buildings, cathedral cases, clergy discipline, appeals and election disputes. The 2026 Order also revokes and replaces the 2025 version, so this is the charging framework the Church of England expects to use from the start of 2027.

Before we get to the money, it helps to translate the language. A consistory court is the main church court in a diocese. A chancellor is the judge in that court. A registrar handles legal and administrative work. A faculty petition is the formal application used when someone wants permission to alter a church building, part of a building, its curtilage or certain fixed objects connected to it. **What this means:** if a parish wants to move a memorial, install new lighting, change seating or carry out other works to a protected church site, it will often need a faculty before anything happens. The Order also keeps a special rule for Canterbury: there, references to the consistory court are read as references to the commissary court, and the chancellor is read as the Commissary General.

One of the clearest figures in the Order is the fee for submitting a faculty petition in certain building cases. From 1 January 2027, a fee of £247 is payable to the diocesan board of finance for work done by the diocesan advisory committee or an archdeacon, whether that work happens before the petition is submitted or afterwards. The rule is not completely inflexible. The diocesan board of finance may waive all or part of that £247 if those responsible for the building, or another person with a substantial connection to it, already make a financial contribution to diocesan funds. No fee is payable under this article for buildings covered by a sharing agreement or for a chapel forming part of Lambeth Palace. **What this means:** the Church is keeping an entry charge for many building petitions, but it has left room to ease the cost in some local circumstances.

The Order also covers quieter forms of legal work that still take time and money. If someone asks a diocesan registrar to search the register of patrons, make an extract from it or provide a certified copy, the fee is linked to the Solicitors’ (Non-Contentious Business) Remuneration Order 2009, unless the task is already covered by an annual fee paid to the registrar. For court proceedings themselves, the picture is more detailed. Articles 5 to 15 point to a set of tables that assign fees to chancellors, registrars, judges, the Vicar-General and others across different kinds of cases. The extract above does not reproduce every table entry, but the framework is still important. In some matters, the person doing the work must certify the hours spent. Article 2 also says a chancellor or registrar may determine that a fee should be paid up to the amount listed, rather than treating every case as identical. Where no fee is listed for a consistory court matter, the registrar can charge the equivalent High Court fee.

A large share of the Order is really about specialist church cases and who bears the cost. It sets fees for appeals from a consistory court, for reviews under the Care of Cathedrals Measure 2011, for proceedings before the Vicar-General’s court, for cases before the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved, and for reviews of its findings. That last court deals with rare offences against ecclesiastical law involving doctrine, ritual or ceremonial. It also sets fees for proceedings and appeals under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003. If you slow the text down, a pattern appears. This is not one flat price list. Sometimes the fee is paid by the person involved in the case. Sometimes it is paid by the Archbishops’ Council. In other places, the diocesan board of finance or an Archbishop carries the cost. **Why that matters:** the Order does more than set prices. It decides where the financial burden sits inside the Church’s own institutions.

A few figures stand out because they are stated directly rather than left inside the tables. If the President of Tribunals under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 cannot or will not act, a replacement appointed under section 4(4) is paid £240 for several procedural decisions, such as whether out-of-time proceedings should be allowed, whether a time limit should be extended or whether page limits should be altered. The same appointee is paid £463 for heavier decisions, including reviewing a dismissal, considering whether a case should go further, deciding whether a respondent has a case to answer, or determining an appeal against suspension. The Order also covers summary election appeals under the Church of England’s 2026 election rules for bishops, clergy and laity. In those cases, the judge is paid by the hour at the same rate used for preparing a judgment on a clergy discipline appeal. Even fast-moving disputes, in other words, still need a formal rule for funding the legal work.

One of the most practical parts of the Order is article 16, because it mirrors the help available in the civil courts. If someone would qualify there for an exemption, reduction or remission of a fee, they are entitled to an equivalent form of help under this Church order. Any application that would be needed for that help is made to the registrar for these purposes. That does not make the cost vanish. Where a fee is reduced or remitted, the diocesan board of finance for the diocese concerned must pay the amount that would otherwise have been due, and it must also cover the registrar’s reasonable costs of handling the application. Then there is another layer again: most fees under the Order, though not the article 3 faculty petition fee, may be increased to cover reasonable travel, subsistence, accommodation and hearing costs. VAT is also added where it is chargeable. **What this means:** access to the process is protected in principle, but the Church still has to find the money somewhere in practice.

Taken together, this is less a dramatic reform than a careful reset of the Church of England’s administrative machinery. The Fees Advisory Commission made the Order, the General Synod approved it, and the revised fees begin on 1 January 2027. On that same date, the 2025 fees order falls away. For most readers, the useful lesson here is not memorising the title of every court. It is seeing how ecclesiastical law works when it touches buildings, discipline, cathedrals and church elections. If you work with a parish, cathedral or diocesan office, the message is straightforward: check the new rules early, budget for 2027 with care, and do not assume every church case will be charged in the same way.