New Parishes Acts and Church Building Acts Amendment Act 1869

9 The portions of a benefice held in severalty may be consolidated into one.

In every case where the respective incumbents of two or more benefices held in severalty (whether each of such benefices belongs to the same patron or to different patrons) have or shall have by statute or by custom the right in virtue of their respective incumbencies to execute the office of an incumbent within one and the same church, and within no other church other than a chapel of ease, then the powers and provisions given by and contained in the seventy-second section of the Act of the third and fourth years of Her Majesty, chapter one hundred and thirteen, with respect to the consolidation of two or more portions of a benefice divided as therein mentioned into one benefice to be held by one incumbent, shall, subject to the conditions therein expressed, be available for and shall apply to and may be. used for effecting the consolidation of both or all of such benefices into one benefice to be held by one incumbent, and this notwithstanding that such benefice when so united may include the cure of souls within more than one parish: Provided always, that any plan or scheme for such consolidation to be framed under the provisions of the Act last mentioned may contain a regulation that such consolidation shall not take effect until after the next avoidance of any one or more of such benefices to be specially named in such plan or scheme; and provided also, that nothing herein contained shall be held to create an union of the two or more parishes so as aforesaid to be included within such united benefice, but that each of such parishes shall remain for all purposes, civil and ecclesiastical, precisely in the same position as if no such union of benefices as aforesaid had taken place.