No-smoking signage for churches may not be 'reasonable'

[...] York Minster reported no difficulty: a spokeswoman said it had glass doors where a notice could be placed. Anni Holden, speaking for Hereford diocese, said that, despite concerns, the churches there would be conforming.

They are less compliant in parts of Suffolk. “Anyone trying to put up a notice on a medieval church would need a faculty to do so, and wouldn’t be granted one,” said a spokesman for the diocese of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich on Tuesday.

The legal advice is that there is no exemption for churches. The concession has been granted of a review in three years’ time, when churches could lobby that the signs are unnecessary. But one barrister, David Lamming, a member of the Ecclesiastical Law Society, concludes that churches and cathedrals “can safely ignore the new signage regulations” on the grounds that it is “reasonable” not to put up a no-smoking sign in a sacred building in which no one would consider smoking. Read more