New Wine Statement, August 2025
In March last year, New Wine were contacted by a vicar in the Church of England who shared his experience as a participant on the 2013/14 New Wine Discipleship Year. He explained that during his placement at a church, he encountered racism, homophobia, and what can only be described as conversion therapy. We are horrified by this.
The church where Rev. Dr. Augustine Tanner-Ihm spent his Discipleship Year placement has conducted its own investigation and made a full apology to him.
New Wine also take responsibility and apologise to Rev. Dr. Tanner-Ihm. We are deeply sorry for what he experienced during that time, for the failures in our systems, governance and culture that allowed it to happen, and for the ways in which we failed to respond adequately to his disclosure in the years that followed. New Wine also acknowledge that part of what Augustine experienced was shaped by unconscious bias and racial prejudice.
New Wine leadership had the privilege to meet with Augustine to discuss these matters directly, and express deep respect for him and his ministry.
Specifically, New Wine apologise for the following:
- That we did not carry out a sufficiently robust vetting process for the church in which Augustine was placed. We failed in our responsibility to ensure the placement was safe, supportive, and aligned with our values.
- That our complaints systems at the time were inadequate. Augustine did not have a clear or trusted way to raise concerns within New Wine. He was unable to access the right support when he needed it most.
- That our response to Augustine’s disclosures over nearly a decade was inadequate. We did not listen well, and we did not act.
In response, and informed by an independent lessons learned review into Augustine’s experiences, we have made substantial changes over the last two years.
These include strengthened safeguarding policies and processes, improved procedures for selecting Discipleship Year placement churches, and enhanced practices for safer recruitment into leadership roles.
Over the coming year, New Wine will continue to prioritise improvements in governance, safeguarding and organisational culture.
New Wine is committed to being safe and inclusive, ensuring concerns and complaints can be brought to us with confidence and that they will be responded to appropriately.
We are deeply grateful to Augustine for his courage in bringing this matter to us. His voice has been instrumental in driving significant change within New Wine. We remain committed to ongoing learning, accountability and continuous improvement in this area.
Our ongoing response and action plan
Since publishing this statement, New Wine has continued a formal organisational review process and has been working carefully through the learning identified.
We recognise that acknowledging where we fell short is only the beginning. We are committed to sustained change in our safeguarding practice, leadership culture, governance, and accountability.
As part of that commitment, the trustees have approved the following action plan, which sets out the concrete steps we are now taking across New Wine. These actions are already underway and will continue to be overseen and reviewed at trustee level.Our prayer is that this ongoing work will help create safer, healthier, and more transparent environments across the New Wine movement.
Inclusive Leadership Development
| Action: | Develop and implement an intentional leadership development pathway to identify, equip, and support leaders from minoritised backgrounds across the New Wine network. |
| Timescale: | Design by Q2 2026; rollout from Q3 2026 |
| Status: | Planned |
| Action: | Appoint a designated Inclusive Leadership Champion to the Strategic Leadership Team, with responsibility for advocating for inclusion, advising on leadership development, and ensuring learning from this review informs strategic decision-making. |
| Timescale: | Q1 2026 |
| Status: | Planned |
Trauma-Informed Practice
| Action: | Embed trauma-informed principles across safeguarding, complaints handling, leadership training, and programme design. |
| Timescale: | Q2–Q4 2026 |
| Status: | In progress |
| Action: | Commission specialist trauma-informed training for senior leaders, Hub Leaders, and Placement Managers. |
| Timescale: | Q2 2026 |
| Status: | Planned |
Safeguarding Oversight
| Action: | Strengthen trustee-level oversight of safeguarding, complaints, and serious incident reporting through regular reporting cycles and clear accountability. |
| Timescale: | Q1 2026 |
| Status: | In progress |
| Action: | Implement organisation-wide safeguarding training for all staff, contractors, and volunteers, with explicit guidance on recognising, reporting, and escalating safeguarding concerns in all contexts, including digital communications (e.g. email, messaging platforms, and social media). |
| Timescale: | Q2–Q3 2026 |
| Status: | In progress |
| Action: | Review safeguarding governance annually to ensure policies are consistently embedded across devolved structures. |
| Timescale: | Annual |
| Status: | Ongoing |
Complaints & Survivor Care
| Action: | Introduce a named survivor-liaison role or function to ensure clear communication, pastoral sensitivity, and continuity during complaints processes. |
| Timescale: | Q2 2026 |
| Status: | Planned |
| Action: | Review complaints processes annually to ensure they remain accessible, trauma-informed, and effective. |
| Timescale: | Annual |
| Status: | Ongoing |
Learning & Accountability
| Action: | Integrate learning from this complaint into leadership training, safeguarding refreshers, and programme reviews. |
| Timescale: | Q2–Q4 2026 |
| Status: | Planned |
| Action: | Maintain a central log of safeguarding and complaints-related learning, reviewed regularly by trustees. |
| Timescale: | Q1 2026 |
| Status: | In progress |
| Action: | Introduce a consistent safeguarding case-management and recording framework to ensure that all concerns are logged, actions tracked, decisions documented, and follow-up completed, with periodic audit and trustee oversight. |
| Timescale: | Q2 2026 |
| Status: | Planned |