Parochial Area Administration Part 2

All areas in the Parochial Hierarchy share the fields listed below. ‘Administration Name’ the name which is used within the diocesan office. It can contain codes or shortened forms of long names. ‘Legal Name’ is the on registered with the Church Commissioners. ‘Publication Name’ is the one used in external communications and publications such as the directory. ‘Index Name’ is a shortened form the name that can be used in an index or for a post label. ‘Informal Agreement’ can be used to flag that an area is not a legal arrangement. It might perhaps represent a local arrangement.

‘Area Acts Like a Parish (<***)’ is a box that indicates the an area is considered to be a Parish even if it is not a parish, such as a church or district. Some dioceses keep things simple by using parish churches instead of parishes. Sometimes a single parish might have a number of large churches within it (or districts) that effectively act like parishes on their own. A parish area should represent a legal parish. For each parish either the parish itself will have the ‘Area Acts Like a Parish’ box ticked, or one or more areas below (church or district) it will have the box ticked. The box controls whether the ‘<***’ text appears after an area in parochial lists. This is to encourage people to store information against the parish rather than the church where appropriate. ‘Ecumenical’ denotes that there is a local ecumenical arrangement in place.

‘Directory/Diocesan Code’ is the code that will be published by the area in the diocesan Directory or Year Book. ‘Accounts Code’ links the area to the Finance Departments computer systems. ‘Alternative Ref 1,2,3’ are fields that can be used by a diocese to store additional codes to link to other computer systems. ‘Charity Reg Number’ stores the Charity Registration Number for large parishes that are required legally to register as a charity. ‘CC Ref’ is the reference number for the are in the Church Commissioner’s database.

‘Open Selected Diocese’ button changes to say ‘Open Selected [Church/Parish/Benefice etc.]’ depending on the type of area selected. The ‘Quick Close’ button leaves the form without being offered the recreate parochial tables option. The ‘Open Folder’ button open the corresponding network save location for an area. The database can be configured to create a folder for each Diocesan Administrative Area for storing files and photos etc.. All types of Diocesan Administrative Areas share a number of common properties. However some, such as churches, additionally have some individual properties. Therefore it is not possible to change a areas type after it has been created.

Part 1 showed the process of making an area redundant. It is important that this process is followed. Redundant areas stay close to where they used to be active to ensure that any statistics/data associated with the area stay in the correct diocesan location. If after a number of years an area has long since passed into unimportance it can be moved to the ‘Redundant Areas’ location. However this is not recommended. Deleting records can cause problems in a system such as the Diocesan Information System therefore this capability is often restricted. However if a record was created by accident and it needs to be deleted, please contact support.

Common Problems The hierarchy on the left shows two common problems. Firstly cumnor school has been placed as part of the church of ‘St. Andrew, Dean Court’. I.e. There should not be an indentation before the school. Seconly, by contrast, the Church of ‘St. Mary, Farmoor’ has been put in the Benefice of Farmoor rather than the parish of Farmoor. I.e. there should be an indentation before the church.

This is the end of part 2