The Reverend Dr Bernard Randall has been cleared of Church of England safeguarding concerns and reached a legal settlement with Trent College, seven years after he was reported to Prevent and barred from ministry over a sermon on gender identity delivered at the Derbyshire school’s chapel.
Rev Dr Bernard Randall, 53, a former Cambridge University college chaplain, is now free to preach and work in education for the first time in seven years, after an independent review found no evidence of harm caused by a sermon he delivered as chaplain of Trent College in July 2019. Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, Randall also secured a legal settlement with the college itself, bringing to a close a prolonged battle that saw him dismissed, reported to the government’s Prevent anti-terrorism programme, and blacklisted as a safeguarding risk by the Diocese of Derby.
A Sermon in Response to a Pupil’s Question
The dispute traces back to June 2018, when Trent College invited external group Educate and Celebrate to deliver staff training, during which staff including Randall were encouraged to chant “smash heteronormativity” by the organisation’s founder, Elly Barnes. During the session, Barnes falsely claimed that “gender identity” was protected under the Equality Act and that her organisation was recognised by Ofsted — neither of which was true. Randall, then serving as school chaplain, raised concerns with senior leaders about the accuracy and suitability of the programme, particularly given the school’s Christian foundation and his own pastoral responsibilities. Despite this, the school adopted the curriculum across all year groups, including the nursery, in January 2019, while excluding Randall from further involvement.
In June 2019, after a pupil asked why students were being told they “have to accept” gender identity teaching at a Christian school, Randall delivered a chapel sermon titled “Competing ideologies.” The sermon was delivered in a Church of England school chapel — precisely the kind of setting, his supporters argue, where pupils might expect to hear orthodox Christian teaching, and reflected Anglican doctrine on marriage and human identity.
Reported to Prevent Without His Knowledge
The consequences were severe. Without Randall’s knowledge, Trent College reported him to Prevent for alleged “religious extremism,” and separately reported him to the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) as a potential safeguarding risk. Both bodies concluded he had no case to answer. Nevertheless, in August 2019 Randall was informed the headmaster, Bill Penty, had found his conduct amounted to gross misconduct and that he would be dismissed. An appeal overturned the dismissal, but he was issued a final warning and permitted to return only under restrictive management conditions that curtailed his role as chaplain.
Randall launched legal proceedings against Trent College in January 2020, citing direct and indirect discrimination under the Equality Act 2010, harassment, victimisation and breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. Later that year, following the Covid lockdowns and a period on furlough, the school proposed cutting the chaplaincy role to seven hours a week during term time. Unable to accept the reduced position, Randall was made redundant, and in April 2021 his claim was widened to include unfair dismissal and victimisation.
Blacklisted by the Diocese of Derby
Around the same time, the Diocese of Derby’s safeguarding team became aware of the sermon, with one staff member reportedly describing Randall’s sacking as “a game changer.” A safeguarding process was launched despite no complaint or allegation of wrongdoing ever being made, ultimately leading Bishop of Derby Libby Lane to refuse Randall a Permission to Officiate licence following his redundancy.
Randall has described what followed as “Kafkaesque interrogations” by the diocese’s local safeguarding team, during which he was not told what specific concerns were under investigation. In July 2021, he was told he would need to undergo an independent assessment by a psychologist who specialised in evaluating sex offenders. He refused, arguing that submitting to such an assessment would amount to a tacit admission of wrongdoing, and was subsequently blacklisted from ministry as a result.
Justin Welby Found ‘Plainly Wrong’
With other avenues exhausted, Randall brought a formal misconduct complaint against Bishop Lane under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 in July 2022, alleging her conduct had been abusive. Then-Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby refused permission for a formal investigation and dismissed the complaint, declining to refer the matter to the National Safeguarding Team.
That decision was later overturned. Gregory Jones KC, a senior Church legal officer for clergy discipline, found that Welby had “misunderstood the scope of his powers” and was “plainly wrong” to dismiss the complaint. Jones separately described the process that led to Randall’s blacklisting as “egregious” and a “gross” error, finding no evidence to support the conclusion that he posed a safeguarding risk. Nine of Randall’s thirteen allegations were sent back to Bishop Lane for a formal response, but the process stalled further: in July 2023, Welby again ruled that no action should be taken against the bishop. It was not until November that year that Randall’s complaint was passed to the Designated Officer for investigation. President of Tribunals Dame Sarah Asplin ultimately concluded the handling of the case had been “highly unsatisfactory” and ordered it restarted from the beginning, though she declined to recommend disciplinary action against Bishop Lane.
A Tribunal Ruling Undone by Bias
Separately, Randall’s employment claim against Trent College was heard at Nottingham Justice Centre in September 2022, before Employment Judge Victoria Butler and lay members including trade unionist Jed Purkis. In February 2023, the tribunal upheld his dismissal, with Judge Butler finding Randall had “misconceived” the nature of Educate and Celebrate and had taken “an extreme view” of the group, while repeatedly and incorrectly stating it was recognised by Ofsted.
It later emerged that Purkis had made a series of anti-Christian social media posts both before and after the ruling, including: “Only atheists should be allowed to run for office,” and “Damn right, you won’t catch us killing in the name of our non-god.” He also wrote of Christians: “If they’re that f***ing super how come there’s so much shit going on in the world?” and “I need no ‘higher power’ to tell me the right way to treat people and behave…”
The same panel began hearing a separate Christian Legal Centre case in March 2024, involving a teacher known as “Hannah,” who had been dismissed after raising safeguarding concerns about an eight-year-old “transitioning” under Stonewall guidance at a primary school. When Purkis’s posts came to light during that hearing, his lawyers successfully argued apparent bias, forcing Judge Butler to recuse the entire panel, including herself, collapsing the case. The Judicial Conduct Investigations Office subsequently found Purkis’s comments amounted to misconduct and issued him a formal rebuke — a finding that would later prove central to Randall’s own appeal.
Vindicated as Educate and Celebrate Collapses
In the meantime, Trent College had reported Randall to the Teaching Regulation Agency and the Disclosure and Barring Service, both of which concluded he had no case to answer. Educate and Celebrate, the organisation whose training had triggered the original dispute, was itself quietly shut down by the Charity Commission following a series of scandals — including the jailing of one of its patrons, Stephen Ireland, for 24 years for a string of child sex offences, including the rape of a 12-year-old boy. Despite these vindications, the Church of England continued to decline reinstating Randall.
Appeal Succeeds, Settlement Reached
Randall’s Employment Appeal Tribunal hearing was postponed in February 2024 pending the outcome of the landmark Kristie Higgs case, also supported by the Christian Legal Centre, in which the Court of Appeal handed down a significant ruling on Christian workplace freedoms on 12 February 2025. Randall’s own appeal began the following month, on 4 March 2025, arguing thirteen grounds including bias within the original tribunal panel, mishandling of the sermon’s theological content, and failure to properly weigh the safeguarding blacklist and Prevent referral.
Judge James Tayler ruled the original tribunal judgment “unsafe” and ordered a retrial, with Trent College ordered to pay £20,000 in costs after ultimately accepting Purkis had been biased. A confidential settlement between the college and Randall followed.
Safeguarding Case Formally Closed
On the safeguarding front, an independent review conducted by the Diocese of London — recommended by the Church’s most senior legal officer — concluded there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the original concerns. Its report stated: “After full consideration and review of the available information I cannot establish, on the balance of probabilities, that harm was caused by the delivery of the sermons. This allegation is therefore unsubstantiated.” The investigator recommended that “the investigation finds the concern or allegation was unsubstantiated and there are no ongoing safeguarding concerns.” Randall has since completed all mandatory safeguarding training and is now eligible for Permission to Officiate, though the Bishop of Derby has not yet acted to help him return to ministry.
Randall’s legal team have noted that the same report also stated he would benefit from safeguarding training to help him “understand what safeguarding both means and strives to achieve,” a comment they believe suggests the Church continues to treat his insistence that he did nothing wrong as itself a concern. They point out that the secular LADO took just one day in 2019 to conclude the matter was “an issue regarding the subject’s beliefs which ran contrary to his employer’s,” in contrast to the Church’s near seven-year process — despite the Church of England’s own bishops declaring in 2021 that Randall’s sermon contained “nothing … outside the doctrine and teaching of the Church of England.”
‘Seven Years Have Been Taken From Me’
Randall reflected on the toll of the case in a personal statement. “Seven years have been taken from me for doing my duty as a CofE chaplain in a school with a CofE ethos. I encouraged pupils to think, to debate, and to love their neighbours whatever they believed. No minister, teacher or chaplain should be punished for upholding Christian teaching in a Christian setting,” he said. “I am relieved that this legal ordeal has finally reached a settlement, but nothing can restore the years that have been taken from me. I was reported to Prevent, treated as a safeguarding risk, and shut out of ministry for preaching a sermon rooted in CofE doctrine.”
He added: “The process and repeated delays has been an extreme punishment which has denied me justice for so long. I still don’t really know what the specifically safeguarding concern might have been… No one from the Church has suggested there was misconduct or inappropriate behaviour on my part, let alone anything remotely abusive. I can only conclude it was opposition to the Church’s own teaching from within, coupled with an inability to own up to it all being a mistake from the start.” He thanked his legal team and supporters, saying: “It is time for the Church and our institutions to recognise what has happened to me and to ensure it never happens again.”
Christian Legal Centre Calls for Reform
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, described the case as one of the most disturbing the organisation has supported. “Bernard Randall has endured one of the most extraordinary and disturbing cases we have ever supported. It has always been and still is a huge scandal. Secular bodies repeatedly vindicated him, but the Church of England, the institution that should have supported him the most, repeatedly failed him,” she said. She added that the settlement with Trent College amounted to “an admission that Bernard was deeply wronged, revealing how a school can so badly lose its way once it bows the knee to transgender ideology,” and called on the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, to meet with Randall urgently.
It now remains to be seen whether the Diocese of Derby and its bishop will take active steps to support Randall’s return to full-time ministry within the Church of England.
