Jim O’Keefe may be entitled to congratulate his team on a consultation exercise within the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle which was well organised and wide-ranging, in terms of the numbers involved if not the issues discussed (“Imagining the future”, 15 July). Their supposed solution, however, cannot be described as “a new model for the local church”; it is closer to being “a rearrangement of the deckchairs”, involving the clustering of parishes within larger partnerships, as is happening elsewhere.