The petitioner wished to move the cremated remains of her mother and her brother from one cemetery to another. The Chancellor could identify no exceptional circumstances which could enable him properly to exercise my discretion to grant the Petition and therefore refused it.

The petitioner sought permission to exhume the remains of her child (who had died, aged five, from a brain tumour), in order to have the remains cremated. She then wished to keep the cremated remains at home. The funeral had involved a humanist ceremony, but the remains had been buried in a consecrated part of the cemetery. The child's parents were unaware that the grave was in consecrated ground. The petitioner had subsequently regretted the interment and had found the situation difficult to come to terms with. The Chancellor found that there were exceptional circumstances to justify the grant of a faculty. The judgment contains a discussion as to whether Articles 8 and 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights applied to this case.

The petitioners wished to remove 6 pews from the back of the church, to provide an open space that could be used as a welcome and circulation space and for post service social time, and to shorten 14 other pews, which would also provide more flexible space. The Victorian Society and Historic England raised objections to the removal of 6 pews. The Chancellor granted a faculty, being satisfied that any harm caused to the significance of the Church was justified by the public benefits that would result from the works.

The petition sought a faculty for the replacement of the remaining fixed pews with chairs (some pews having been replaced with chairs in 2011) and minor making good to the floor. The proposed type of chair was the non-upholstered Jacob lightweight wooden high-stacking chair by Alpha Furniture. Two people objected, but did not become parties opponent. The Commissary General granted a faculty. He was satisfied that the removal of the particular pews would not result in harm to the significance of the church as a place of special architectural or historic interest and that the petitioners had advanced a sufficiently particularised and convincing case.

After considering the principles in Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, the Chancellor found special reasons why he should permit the exhumation of the remains of a young person of Chinese descent and reinterment in another section of the cemetery where all other members of her family and members of the local Chinese community were buried or had reserved graves.

The petitioner's father's cremated remains were interred in Epperstone churchyard in Nottinghamshire in 2004. After he died, the petitioner moved to Bradford-on-Avon. In 2013 the petitioner's mother moved to a nursing home in Bradford-on-Avon and she died in 2018. The petitioner wished to have her father's ashes exhumed from Epperstone churchyard and interred with her mother's ashes in Bradford-on-Avon, because it would be inconvenient for the petitioner to travel regularly between Bradford-on-Avon and Nottinghamshire to visit her father's grave. The Chancellor refused to grant a faculty, as inconvenience did not amount to an exceptional reason for departing from the general principle that Christian burial is to be seen as permanent.

A bench had been introduced into the churchyard in 2002 to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee. In June 2021 the bench had been painted in rainbow colours, without consent, by a small group of people intending to show support for the National Health Service, in view of the association of the rainbow with the NHS, which had arisen during the course of the Coronavirus pandemic. The priest-in-charge sought a confirmatory faculty to retain the bench as painted. The Chancellor was not persuaded by the arguments for retention of the rainbow colours. He refused to grant a faculty and ordered that the bench should be re-painted or re-stained as soon as possible: "I have to consider the legal situation regarding this bench and also the thoughts, feelings and emotions of all users of the churchyard, not just those who support the significant change that was carried out without permission".

An application was made for a faculty for the replacement of the existing convection gas heaters with nine new convection gas heaters. The parish had obtained a quotation in the sum of £33,795.60. Of concern to the Chancellor was that the parish had already paid a deposit of £17,000 to the contractor before applying for a faculty, and when the application was made it was clear that the parish had not had “due regard” to the Church of England’s Net Zero policy by considering other options which did not involve replacing one fossil fuel system with another. The Chancellor required the petitioners to look at other options, which they did. The Chancellor, whilst deprecating the way things had been done, acknowledged that to reject the proposals would cause undue further financial problems for the church and a delay in providing a new heating system. He therefore granted a faculty, subject to conditions requiring the parish to enter into a green gas tariff or a separate arrangement with a carbon offsetting scheme and to obtain professional advice about how to make a meaningful contribution to Net Zero.

The petitioners applied to remove and dispose of a bell which had been stored at the rear of the nave of the church for 41 years. The bell was cast by Humphrey Wilkinson, a Lincolnshire founder, in 1700. The Church Buildings Council objected. The Petitioners wished to remove the bell as it impeded the use of the rear of the Church. The Chancellor granted a faculty to allow the bell to be removed to the diocesan store for safekeeping.

The Petitioner applied for a faculty to exhume her father's ashes and reinter them in a different part of the churchyard. The undertaker's gravedigger had dug the existing grave too close to the footpath for the proposed memorial, so that there would have been a danger of the grave and memorial being trodden on by members of the public. This was causing distress to the petitioner's mother. The Chancellor authorised the exhumation and reinterment.