CHURCH leaders from North Yorkshire have launched a move which could see couples getting more choice about which church they are married in.

They are launching a challenge to an apparent anomaly in changes which were introduced by the Church of England last year.

On Saturday delegates to the Synod of the Ripon and Leeds diocese are being asked to support a move to allow couples with family connections to a parish to be married in any church in the benefice - not just the parish church itself.

A benefice may include more than one parish, and couples living in one of the parishes in a benefice already had the right to be married in any of the churches in the same benefice.

But under the Church of England Marriage Measure of 2008, couples who now have a qualifying connection to a parish church can still only be married in that specific church – not in any church within the benefice that church is a part of.

The Bishop of Ripon, the Right Reverend John Packer, said: "I believe that when General Synod passed the original Marriage Measure most of us believed that the intention was that couples with a genuine qualifying connection to a church would be treated in the same way as couples who already lived in that parish.

"But at the moment, for example, if two school friends wanted their weddings in a nearby church but one had moved away, the one still living in the neighbouring parish could have her wedding there, but the one with the ‘qualifying connection’ couldn’t."

The diocese of Ripon and Leeds stretches from south Leeds to the borders of County Durham and includes parts of the Yorkshire Dales, the city of Ripon and towns such as Richmond, Catterick, Harrogate, and Knaresborough.