Five years after the introduction of sweeping reforms to try to stop sexual abuse, the Roman Catholic Church has been told that it needs to do more.

Bishops and congregational leaders have displayed a “patchy will” to drive through reform and there is a view held by some within the Church that the implementation of protection policies had been “tolerated rather than embraced”, an independent report said.

The Cumberlege Commission said that if existing tensions within the Church in Britain over how to tackle the issue of abuse were not confronted, they would result in a step backwards. It expressed concern that leaders could be “minimising” the anguish that followed child abuse and that “complacency” surrounds the issue.

The commission assessed the progress of the Church in the five years since the Nolan report, which recommended an overhaul of procedures following a series of sex abuse scandals involving Catholic priests.

While the commission, chaired by Baroness Cumberlege, praised the Church for taking many steps to improve child protection, it said that it risked a “serious reversal” of some of its gains. “Five years on and the Church can quite rightly take pride in the progress it has made,” the report said. “But the task is far from done and if the tensions that have come to the fore in this review are left unaddressed by those in the Church with the authority to deliver, we believe they risk a serious reversal.”

It added that the Church had addressed either completely or partially 79 of Nolan’s 83 recommendations.

However Margaret Kennedy, of Ministers and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors, said that the Church had a long way to go and that abuse victims were being “sidelined”.