The petitioners sought a faculty for various refurbishments of this Grade II*-listed church to improve safety and access. The petitioners also wished to remove and dispose of the pipe organ, as an unfortunate but necessary side-effect of the other refurbishment works. The bulk of the refurbishment works were uncontentious, but the need to dispose of the organ was disputed, and the DAC did not recommend it.
The court applied the Duffield principles and found the works as a whole would result in harm to the church as a building of special architectural or historic interest. In assessing the degree of harm weighed against need, the proposals were considered separately. The majority would result in minimal to modest harm, with clear public benefit.
As to the pipe organ, built by Brindley and Foster in 1879, the court considered that, by focusing on its removal being a necessary by-product of the other works, the petitioners failed to consider the impact and justification for removing the pipe organ in its own right. Further, the court approved re St Nicholas, Warwick (2010) 12 Ecc LJ 407, which expressed a burden on petitioners to overcome the presumption that a pipe organ will be replaced by another pipe organ. The petitioners also appeared not to have sufficiently considered alternative proposals for relocating the organ within the church. Removing the pipe organ would cause serious harm to the building's significance, for which no compelling justification was provided. Accordingly, a faculty passed the seal for the remaining works but was refused in respect of the organ. [Jack Stuart]
