Ecclesiastical Law Journal

Table of Contents - Volume 14 - Issue02

Case Notes

President of the Methodist Conference v Preston

Court of Appeal: Maurice Kay and Longmore LJJ and Sir David Keene, December 2011 Clergy – employment status

Ruth Arlowa1

a1 Barrister, Deputy Chancellor of the Dioceses of Chichester and Norwich

(Online publication April 16 2012)

The court held that, as a result of the judgment in Percy v Board of National Mission of the Church of Scotland [2006] 2 AC 28, the rebuttable presumption that, viewed objectively, there was an absence of any intention to create an employer–employee relationship between an individual cleric and the church within which he or she ministered had been abandoned. The earlier ruling in President of the Methodist Conference v Parfitt [1984] ICR 176, that the nature of the relationship between the individual minister and the Methodist Church was a spiritual one and that ministers were not, therefore, employed under a contract of service, was no longer binding. It was for employment tribunals to decide on the facts whether or not the statutory criteria of unfairness had been met in any individual case. A finding of an employer–employee relationship would not violate the church's right to manifest its religion under Article 9 of the ECHR. [Frank Cranmer]