27Ecclesiastical property.
(1)Where, under any of the provisions of this Act, a notice is required to be served on an owner of land and the land is ecclesiastical property, a like notice shall be served on the Church Commissioners.
(2)Where any ecclesiastical property is to be acquired compulsorily under the powers of this Act and the benefice in question is vacant, then the fee simple of such property shall for the purposes of the acquisition be treated as being vested in the Church Commissioners.
(3)Any moneys agreed or awarded upon any acquisition under the powers of this Act of ecclesiastical property shall not be paid as directed by the Lands Clauses Acts but shall be paid to the Church Commissioners and shall be applied by them as follows:—
(a)in defraying a fair proportion of the costs, charges and expenses incurred by them, the bishop of the diocese in which the property is situated, the Diocesan Board of Finance or an incumbent of an ecclesiastical benefice in opposing the Bill for this Act;
(b)in defraying any expenses incurred by any of the persons referred to in paragraph (a) above in relation to any such acquisition by the Company and not reimbursed by the Company;
(c)as to any remaining balance and as to both capital and income, for purposes for which the proceeds of a sale by agreement of the land would be applicable under any enactment or measure authorising such a sale or the disposal of the proceeds of such a sale.
(4)In this section “ecclesiastical property” means land belonging to an ecclesiastical benefice or being or forming part of a church or churchyard subject to the jurisdiction of a bishop of any diocese or the site of such a church or being or forming part of a burial ground subject to such jurisdiction or being diocesan glebe land within the meaning of the [1976 No. 4.] Endowments and Glebe Measure 1976.