Clergy Conduct Measure gains Royal Assent, repealing the Church of England's 2003 discipline law

The Clergy Conduct Measure 2026 received Royal Assent on 8 July 2026, and with it the Church of England ended the disciplinary system it has run since 2003. Section 71 of the new Measure is blunt about the change: "The CDM is repealed." The Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, criticised inside the Church as slow and adversarial, goes, and a thirteen part statute replaces it, covering jurisdiction, system structure, complaint handling, restrictions and suspensions, penalties, reviews and appeals, and scrutiny by the General Synod itself.

The route to assent was not smooth. The General Synod first gave the Measure final approval on 13 February 2025, by 25 votes to none among the bishops, 128 to none with one abstention among the clergy, and 145 to none with two abstentions among the laity. Moving it, Canon Kate Wharton said the system must be fair, proportionate and based in good order. Parliament then stopped it. The Ecclesiastical Committee, the joint committee of both Houses that must find a Measure expedient before Parliament votes on it, declined to do so in the autumn of 2025. The objection turned on the draft's default expectation that tribunal hearings would be held in private.

The Church amended the text and brought it back. On 10 February 2026 the Synod approved the revised Measure, which reverses that presumption so tribunals sit in public except where sitting in private is agreed to be in the interests of justice. The vote was 21 to nil among the bishops, 142 to nil with three abstentions among the clergy, and 149 to nil among the laity. The Bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner, told members the exceptions would cover cases involving child or vulnerable witnesses.

The structure the Measure builds is tiered. Minor grievances are meant to be resolved locally and informally. Allegations of misconduct go to case assessors, with penalties imposed by a bishop. Serious cases are handled centrally by an investigation and tribunals team. The Measure also raises the threshold for suspension, creates a route for dealing with vexatious complaints including restraint orders, adds administrative sanctions for lower level misconduct, and restores deposition from Holy Orders as a penalty for the most serious findings. Section 71 does not sweep away everything: subsection (3) preserves parts of the 2003 Measure that amended the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963, so the older architecture of church courts survives underneath.

Discipline is only one of two governance tracks the Church has been rebuilding, and the other is safeguarding. On 11 February 2025 the Synod rejected full independence, the option known as Model 4, in which every safeguarding officer would have left church employment, and instead voted 392 to 9 with 6 abstentions for Model 3, moving the national team to an external body while diocesan and cathedral staff stay employed by the Church. Survivors and advocates described that as kicking the can down the road. A year later, on 11 February 2026, the Synod voted 345 to 1 with 3 abstentions for a plan to create a new national safeguarding charity with a majority independent board and a chief safeguarding officer whose operational powers are insulated from church leadership, with consultation from spring 2026 and operational change targeted by the end of 2026. Legislation to entrench it has not yet been drafted.

Sources disagree about how much of the conduct reform Synod members actually saw. Thinking Anglicans carried commentary from the journalist Gavin Drake during the February 2026 session arguing that the real Measure was still behind the curtain, because so much of its operation will sit in rules and codes of practice made later. The Church's own account presents the amendment as a straightforward concession on open justice. Both can be true.

The Synod that passed the Measure has since gone. At its July 2026 group of sessions, the last of the quinquennium, it approved amended rules for the abuse redress scheme created by the Abuse (Redress) Measure 2025, covering applications, assessment, appeals and data protection, with the scheme expected to open later in 2026. The session ended with dissolution and writs from the King, and elections follow in the autumn.

What is not yet known is when the Clergy Conduct Measure's provisions actually commence, how many live cases will transfer from the old system, what the rules and codes underneath the Measure will say, whether the safeguarding charity survives contact with a newly elected Synod, and whether Model 4 ever returns.