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New tool helps parishes manage legal risk

By Amanda Wells

The Presbyterian Church’s first comprehensive legal compliance programme will launch later this year.

Many laws apply to churches, including those related to employment, health and safety, property, the environment, taxation and intellectual property. The compliance programme gives parishes an easy way to check that they are complying with these laws.

It is designed to remove the worry that a parish may be inadvertently left open to legal action because it is breaching a law or regulation of which it is not aware.

The programme, called Presbyterian Aon Compliance Tool and developed by the Church’s insurer Aon, allows parishes and presbyteries to complete simple checklists so that they can produce a report highlighting any areas of non-compliance and the actions they are taking to solve them.

PACT will be trialled by several presbyteries in coming months to fine-tune its roll-out to every parish after General Assembly 2006.

PACT is accessed through a dedicated website that provides downloads of the compliance checklists and report. The website also includes a timetable for compliance work, along with instructions and information about legislation and compliance requirements. Parishes that do not have access to the Internet will be able to request a paper version of the programme.

The launch of PACT will mark the end of a process that started in 1997, when a legal opinion commissioned by the Church revealed that members of a church’s Board of Managers (which by definition includes members of session such as the elders and minister) are severally personally responsible for the statutory obligations of the congregation, apart from those that fall on the Presbyterian Church Property Trustees, but that this responsibility can also be extended to the Church as an entity.

Assembly Executive Secretary Kerry Enright says that liability can track “from any part of the body to the whole”.

“The reality is that people look to all of us.”

There have been several instances where employment court complaints have been extended from the employing parish to the Church as an organisation.

In 1998 there were discussions about an inter-denominational approach, with the suggestion that a compliance tool would be developed for co-operating ventures then rolled out to Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist, Congregational and Church of Christ parishes.

But this co-operative plan foundered after the denominations’ different insurance companies declined to work together.

When Fiona Stenhouse started as human resources manager last year, she identified non-compliance as a significant area of risk for the church, and in partnership with Aon, a system was developed to help parishes and presbyteries easily ensure they are complying with applicable legislation.