Re St Philip and St James, Whittington: Worcester Consistory Court: Mynors Ch, 12 November 2017 [2017] ECC Wor 1 Extension to church – impact on ‘veteran’ yew – balancing exercise

Case Notes The petitioners sought a faculty to extend the church to accommodate an accessible lavatory, a store, a kitchen and a meeting room to provide facilities for children and general community use - uses for which there was currently inadequate space and some of which had had to stop as a result.The Church Buildings Council (CBC), which provided two reports on the impact of the proposed extension on the yew, did not support the proposals on the basis that they risked threatening the yew, and suggested that other locations should be explored instead.In assessing the proposals in terms of the risk of harm to the yew tree, the chancellor adopted a balancing exercise by analogy with the Duffield guidelines on assessing proposals which would result in harm to the significance of listed buildings (see Re St Alkmund, Duffield [2013] Fam 158).