ENABLING clergy to purchase a house during their time in ministry may very well be an “investment with a long-term payback”, the chief executive of the Church of England Pensions Board, John Ball, said on Tuesday.
Proposals from the Pensions Board were being “worked up” in response to a consultation last yr, Mr Ball said this week, and confirmed that the Board was engaged in the present review of stipend levels.
A reduced reliance on retirement housing, which the Pensions Board currently helps to fund, might in the long run amount to a “cost saving for the Church”, he said.
Decisions on funding levels for 2026-28 will probably be made by the Church Commissioners and the Archbishops’ Council in the approaching months, following recommendations from the Triennium Funding Working Group.
“In a way, we wait for that to see how this falls, versus other priorities the Church needs to contemplate. But, even so, we’ve been taking forward the ideas we will, including the later-life home ownership options,” Mr Ball said.
Last yr, the Pensions Board surveyd the clergy about their retirement housing needs (News, 5 July 2024). Sixty-nine per cent of respondents thought it unlikely that they might own a property after they retired.
Eighty-seven per cent supported the Board’s proposals, which involve diversifying the kinds of support available, including assistance with buying a property while still in ministry (News, 15 November 2023).
This month, the Board agreed a £50-million revolving credit facility with NatWest to extend its retirement-housing portfolio (News, 7 February).
The Board’s annual report, published this week, says that 49 recent purchases were made for the property portfolio in 2024, and 77 households moved right into a church retirement property. The Board had a 9.4-per-cent return on its investments in 2024, which took the fund to £3.4 billion.
This allowed for clergy pensions to be increased by 6.7 per cent last yr, exceeding the usual guaranteed increase specified by the principles of the scheme as a way to match inflation, the report says.
New online tools to enable members to envision their pensions and calculate their options were used almost 11,000 times in 2024, and further improvements to the web site are planned for later this yr, the report says.
