The Church of England is introducing the Building Management Portal, a new national digital system for managing applications relating to permissions for works on churches, their contents, and churchyards, starting from mid-October 2026.
The portal will replace the Online Faculty System, which closes on 29 September 2026. It will be used for List A, List B, and faculty applications, as well as associated casework, consultation, documents, and decision stages.
The new portal has been designed to make the application process easier to follow and to improve consistency in the way casework is managed. It will give users clearer information about application stages, supporting documents and the actions needed as an application progresses.
The legal process itself is not changing. The Building Management Portal provides a new digital route for managing the existing permission framework. It is intended to make the process clearer, more structured, and easier to follow, for applicants, parishes, diocesan teams, archdeacons, registrars, chancellors, and consultees.
Accessing the Building Management Portal
Users will access the Building Management Portal through the new CofE Portal. This provides a secure login route, required for cyber-security and data-protection, and includes two-factor authentication. Users will also need to complete a one-time registration process so that their role, diocese, and church access can be assigned correctly.
Existing and historic cases
Existing and historic cases from the Online Faculty System will be migrated into the new Building Management Portal.
Preparing for the national rollout
The portal has already been tested by four dioceses earlier this year, and the learning from that pilot has helped strengthen the national rollout, particularly around imported case data, registration, role-based access, user guidance, and issue reporting.
Training and support
We have already put together some resources on our website (user guides, training videos, and FAQs), and where you can also contact our DAC team with any queries. This includes guidance on what to do if you are involved in a current or future application. When further resources or updates to existing materials are provided, following parish user feedback during the early rollout of the new system, we will add these to our webpage in due course.
Further national information about the Building Management Portal is available on the Church of England website.
We know that moving to a new national system will require some adjustment. Thank you for your support as we prepare for this change.
