Diocesan Synod Digest 22 November 2025
Diocesan Synod took place on Saturday 22nd November at the Lincoln Bishop University campus. The meeting…
Read the story
There are two vacancies for Diocese of Lincoln representatives on General Synod for this term, which will end in July 2026. We need to elect one clergy person and one lay person to fill these positions.
The General Synod is an important body where policies and measures are ultimately decided and which determine how the Church of England moves into the future in its service of God’s Kingdom and this nation. It is essential, therefore, that those who are elected to speak for the diocese of Lincoln are prayerful, thoughtful representatives of the wonderful range of churches, communities, issues and mission ambitions which characterise Greater Lincolnshire in the national and international scene.
The election
The electorate for General Synod is predominately made up of Deanery Synod members for deaneries in the Diocese of Lincoln. Like in the 2021 elections, for those who have provided an email address, the whole of the election process – both nomination and voting stages – will take place using an online portal provided by Civica Election Services.
Electors have been emailed login details to the election sites which will enable them to make nominations and to vote when the time comes.
Timetable
Monday 2nd June: Nomination period opens. Invitations via email (and in hard copy for those without email) will be sent out to the electorate. The nominations portal will be open for 28 days.
Monday 30th June: An additional 7 days are available for those who have been nominated to upload their electoral addresses.
Monday 14th July: Voting portal opens (email or voting ballot will be sent to the electorate).
Friday 18th July: Deadline for questions for the online hustings
W/C 21st July: Two online hustings will be held, one for each house.
Monday 4th August: Voting closes at 12 noon. Civica will run the count and the results will be available later that week.
Who are the candidates?
Please find below the list of candidates for each position, and a link to their electoral addresses.
House of Laity
House of Clergy
The hustings
In order to ensure they were accessible to as many of our electors as possible, hustings for both houses were arranged virtually on the meeting platform Zoom. Members of the houses were given the opportunity to submit questions in advance.
Hustings for the House of Clergy were held on Wednesday 23rd July. The event involved an introduction portion for each candidate, followed by a number of questions about key issues which each candidate responded to in turn. A recording of the event can be found below:
The live hustings event for the House of Laity had to be cancelled for availability reasons, but the two candidates were able to provide short introduction videos and written responses to the hustings questions, which can be found below:
Laura Mitchell
Paul Brewster
Further Guidance and Documents
- General Synod Elections 2021 – Notes for the Guidance of Dioceses (324.41 KB)
- FAQs for Online Elections (162.58 KB)
- Clergy Election Rules 2020 (311.86 KB)
- House of Laity Election Rules 2020 (275.78 KB)
- Single Transferable Vote Rules 2020 (242.69 KB)
- General Synod Privacy Notice Dec 23 (210.38 KB)
Presiding Officer
Helen Doyle
Deputy Diocesan Secretary
Helen.doyle@lincoln.anglican.org | 01522 504032
Data Protection & GDPR
Electors should note that the regulations governing the General Synod elections allow candidates to request details of not only electors’ postal addresses as previously, but also of electors’ email addresses, where these have been provided. These details are solely for the purpose of sending to electors canvassing information from the candidates in this election.
The Data Protection Act 2018, together with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (together known as the UKGDPR) governs the UK’s data protection regime.
The Rules require personal data to be processed for the purposes of the Synodical elections in various ways. These include:
• secretaries of deanery synods giving a list of names and addresses of members of both houses of their deanery synods to the diocesan electoral registration officer (CRR rule 20)
• the diocesan electoral registration officer recording those names and addresses (including email addresses) in a register of electors (CRR rule 27)
• the diocesan electoral registration officer and the secretaries of deanery synods ascertaining whether the content of the registers of electors are correct (CRR rule 54)
• the issue by the presiding officer of invitations to nominate (CRR rule 55, HoL Election Rules rule 5)
• the supply by the presiding officer to every candidate of a copy of the name and address of every elector (including email addresses where provided) (HoL Election Rules, rule 6)
• the equivalent rules in the Election Rules for the Clergy and the Upper Houses of the Convocations.
The Church Representation Rules (CRRs) are primary legislation (being contained in Schedule 3 to the Synodical Government Measure 1969). The Election Rules of the Houses are made under the authority of the CRRs or under the authority of Canons H 2 and H 3 and impose legal requirements on presiding officers and others. Accordingly, in all the above cases, the “processing [of the data] is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the [data] controller is subject.” That is the lawful basis for the processing of the data under article 6 of the UKGDPR. Inclusion of an individual on the register of electors reveals that individual’s religious beliefs, as electors must be members of the Church of England or of a Church in communion, and the register therefore contains ‘special category personal data’ to which additional protections apply.
In order to process this data it is necessary, as well as satisfying a lawful basis under article 6, also to satisfy one of the conditions under article 9. The relevant condition for the processing under article 9 is that the “processing is carried out in the course of its legitimate activities with appropriate safeguards by a … not-for-profit body with a … religious … aim” (article 9(d)). The consent of those whose names are on the register of electors is not required for the processing of their data in accordance with the Rules, and such consent should not be sought.