In the year since the Church of England published its Makin Review into the savage abuses committed by John Smyth, seven clergy are facing disciplinary proceedings and another cleric is awaiting to hear whether the complaint against him can go forward.

The latest cleric to get a disciplinary complaint from the C of E’s National Safeguarding Team (NST) for alleged failings in the Smyth cover-up is the Revd Iain Broomfield, former vicar of Christ Church Bromley in Rochester Diocese, now retired.

But it has emerged that Broomfield has already been sanctioned by his former diocese and does not have permission to officiate (PTO). The National Register for Clergy shows no PTO entry for him, which means he is not licensed by any diocesan bishop to take church services or preach.

The NST last month sought permission from the President of Tribunals, the senior judge who oversees the Church’s disciplinary processes, to bring an out-of-time complaint against Broomfield under the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM). Broomfield was criticised in the Makin Review whose findings led to the resignation of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, in November last year.

Sir Stephen Males has already granted permission for complaints to proceed against seven clerics criticised in the Makin report, including Bishop Paul Butler, Ven Roger Combes, Revd Sue Colman, Revd Andrew Cornes, Revd Tim Hastie-Smith, Revd Nick Stott and Revd John Woolmer. He did not allow NST complaints to proceed against three other clergy named in the report, former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, Canon Hugh Palmer, former Rector of All Souls Langham Place in central London, and Revd Paul Perkin, former vicar of St Mark’s Battersea Rise in south London.

From 1987 to 2000 Broomfield was leader (commandant) of the Iwerne evangelical camps in Dorset where Smyth groomed his victims in the 1970s and early 1980s. In its news story about the NST complaint against Broomfield the Church Times incorrectly stated that he undertook his role in 1982 when the scale and savagery of Smyth’s beatings of boys and young men were disclosed to an inner circle of senior Iwerne leaders.

It was in fact five years later that Broomfield succeeded the late Revd David Fletcher as Iwerne camp commandant. Fletcher, who was at the centre of the Smyth cover-up and earlier this year was unmasked by Channel 4 News as an abuser himself, stepped down as Iwerne leader in 1986 to become Rector of St Ebbe’s, the conservative evangelical flagship church in Oxford.

The Iwerne camps aimed to attract pupils from the ‘top 30’ English fee-paying boarding schools. Broomfield did not attend such a school and previously had not been on the camps but was regarded as ‘the most camp-able non-camper’ after Iwerne failed to find an insider to replace Fletcher.

Read it all in Anglican Mainstream

Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire, UK. He was a junior leader on the Iwerne camps from 1985 to 1988.