New dean appointed for cathedral

Canon Neil Collings will be installed at the cathedral in September

A new Dean of St Edmundsbury Cathedral in Suffolk has been appointed.

Canon Neil Collings will move from his job as treasurer at Exeter Cathedral, where he has been for seven years, to Bury St Edmunds in August.

He succeeds the Very Reverend James Atwell, who instigated the cathedral's £12.5m Millennium Tower project and has been appointed Dean of Winchester.

Canon Collings will be installed as Dean of St Edmundsbury at a service in the cathedral on Saturday 16 September.

"I am so looking forward to working with my future colleagues and the congregation in taking this great church to the next exciting phase of its history," he said.

"The new tower has indeed made it a spiritual beacon for Suffolk and now we shall want to make that true for all the people of the county and beyond."

Canon Collings was born and grew up in Torquay.

His career includes time as a parish priest in Devon, Hereford and St Albans, and as Chaplain at Westminster Abbey.