{"id":522259,"date":"2026-04-09T22:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522259\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T22:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:40:11","slug":"bishop-of-salisbury-steps-back-during-audit-and-resigns-as-commissioners-trustee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522259\/","title":{"rendered":"Bishop of Salisbury steps back during audit and resigns as Commissioners\u2019 trustee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>THE <a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/bishop-of-salisbury\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bishop of Salisbury<\/a>, the Rt Revd Stephen Lake, has stepped back voluntarily as diocesan while a financial audit takes place, and has also resigned as a trustee of the Church Commissioners, the Church Times has learned.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for the Church of England said: \u201cAn ongoing financial audit is being undertaken following allegations of potential financial irregularities in relation to two separate funds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The diocese was set on Thursday evening to confirm to their clergy that Bishop Lake had voluntarily stepped back as diocesan bishop while the audit was ongoing.<\/p>\n<p>A statement from the diocese of Salisbury said: \u201cThese funds relate to the office of the Bishop of Salisbury but are separate from parish share and other funds controlled by the Diocesan Board of Finance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It confirmed that the Bishop of Sherborne, the Rt Revd Karen Gorham, would be Acting Diocesan Bishop \u201cduring this period\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday, Bishop Lake was absent from confirmations at Salisbury Cathedral. The Rt Revd Tim Thornton, an honorary assistant bishop in the diocese, stepped in to preside.<\/p>\n<p>The news comes after it emerged, separately, last week that the chief executive of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/church-commissioners\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Church Commissioners<\/a> for England, John Worth, was stepping down (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2026\/2-april\/news\/uk\/uk-news-in-brief\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">News, 2 April<\/a>). A note on the Church of England website did not give any context, but said that the chief operating officer, Rosie Slater-Carr, would take over as interim chief executive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Revd Stephen Lake, has stepped back voluntarily as diocesan while a financial&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-522259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}