THE Additional Curates Society (ACS), a charity, founded in 1837, that at one time funded one third of assistant curates, is working with the Charity Commission to reform its governance, after a criticism was made by a whistle-blowing trustee.
A dossier submitted to the charity in December 2023 and seen by the Church Times raises a series of concerns concerning the governance of the charity, including the right use of its funds, which totalled £6.2 million at the tip of 2023. It was submitted by a trustee after their decision to resign a month earlier, in a letter that regretted that asking questions had been met with “hostility”.
A central concern is whether or not using funds reflects the charity’s objectives. The ACS’s latest annual report lists its objects and principal activity as “providing support, or assisting within the support of clergy in poor and populous parishes and to make annual grants towards the upkeep of additional clergy in those parishes in need of such assistance”.
Between 2018 and 2023, the variety of grants made for the support of clergy ranged from only one (in 2023, totalling £10,000) to 5 (in 2018, totalling £49,500). The dossier notes that at no point up to now six financial years has expenditure on supporting clergy posts reached even one tenth of the charity’s total income for the yr.
In 2023, a complete of 26 parishes (a complete that has ranged from 15 to 26 up to now six years) received support totalling £91,318 for housing and dealing expenses. Total income for the yr was £692,955, including donations of £132,369 and legacies of £199,199. Expenditure on “generating voluntary income” totalled £181,084 — nearly double the quantity spent on grants.
The dossier, sent to Alexandra Buckingham, an ACS trustee tasked with carrying out an internal review of the charity, features a comparison of the charity’s “underspend” (the difference between income and expenditure) over the past six years, totalling £1.1 million. During the identical period, the charity had received donations of £1.2 million. Dividing the quantity spent on stipendiary support by the number of people in receipt indicated that a maximum of £12,000 was being offered.
“The Church of England is currently facing its biggest ever financial crisis, particularly within the deployment of its clergy,” the previous trustee wrote. “Most dioceses are cutting back on their numbers of stipendiary clergy. Set against this backdrop, it seems hard to fathom that a charity with the ACS’s objects is witnessing such high levels of underspending. . . The ACS mustn’t be fund-raising if it has no plans in place to spend the funds raised.”
Despite its £6-million fund, the most recent annual report lists a key risk as a drop in the extent of donations received.
THE ACS was founded in 1837 by a layman, Joshua Watson, with the support of a Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Charles Blomfield, and a High Church Conservative MP, Sir Robert Inglis. Its object was then, as now, to assist the availability of clergy in poor and populous parishes, with appeals drawing attention to the country’s growing industrial towns where high levels of deprivation could possibly be found.
Its growth within the latter half of the nineteenth century was dramatic: the charity played an important part in meeting the needs of parishes serving the country’s growing urban population. By the early twentieth century, it was supporting greater than 1200 clergy in greater than 1000 parishes.
While the variety of clergy supported fell throughout the century, it remained significant. In 1955, roughly one third of the assistant curates in England and Wales — 760 out of 2400 — depended “for a substantial a part of their stipend” on the charity. In 1989, within the wake of the report Faith within the City, it announced that it might use £300,000 of its invested income over three years to supply free curates in urban priority areas.
In 1993, its council announced that it might “not have the ability to recognise the break in tradition proposed by the General Synod in November 1992”, and wouldn’t support women clergy. It was, it said, “prepared to go on spending £250,000 a yr to assist fund curates in 400 parishes”, referring to its longstanding pledge “that each penny given to ACS by parishes is returned to poor and populous parishes”.
TODAY, the ACS website states that “more recently grants have been applied to assist defray the price to the parish of employing an assistant priest. . . Without doubt, many parishes would never have the ability to contemplate employing an assistant priest without assistance from ACS. Diocesan Bishops have at all times been pleased to call on ACS to enable them to position curates in parishes needing financial help.”
The size of the grant is set by the income of the parish and the amount of cash available on the time of the applying. Grants are considered quarterly and the ACS says that they’re “often pledges which are only paid upon the appointment of a priest”.
Among the requests made within the dossier is that greater transparency be provided by the ACS about “which parishes it has supported and what criteria were used to award those grants”. This should address, it says, “those occasions on which ACS trustees’ and ACS staff members’ own parishes have benefited from ACS grants”. It records that, in November 2023, grants made to parishes in Truro and Lincoln were “scaled back . . . though the charity has ample funds to satisfy those grant requests in full”.
Additional Curates SocietyThe ACS Vocations Conference in October
The latest annual report observes that in recent times there was a decline within the variety of curates being ordained, and says that “larger grants have been given to fewer parishes as an alternative of modest grants to a lot of parishes”.
With reference to the “alarming rate of parish vacancies” as a consequence of the age of clergy and retirement rate, it states: “The trustees consider that the most important emphasis of the Society must be targeting the encouragement of vocations throughout the Catholic constituency.” In 1973, the charity observed that as “there isn’t a point in collecting money to pay for assistant curates if there are not any assistant curates to, pay” (News, March 23 1973). The dossier queries the emphasis, drawing attention to the existence of the Anglo Catholic Ordination Candidates Fund, which has a £5.4-million fund.
SINCE 2008, the ACS has been led by Canon Darren Smith, its general secretary and only full-time worker. Ordained in 1986, he served his title on the Ascension, Leicester. The Charity Commission records that Canon Smith serves on the boards of several other Anglo-Catholic charities. He is treasurer-general of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, chair of the Church Union and of the Guild of Servants of the Sanctuary. All three charities are based on the ACS headquarters in Birmingham, opened in 2018 (News, 14 September 2018).
The ACS dossier asks questions on expenditure on the Birmingham property, which also serves as Canon Smith’s living accommodation. More broadly, it raises concerns concerning the financial governance of the charity, listing a scarcity of annual budget, register of interests, quarterly management of accounts, and monitoring or sign-off of the overall secretary’s expenses and the company bank card. “There is not any allegation being product of financial impropriety,” it says. “However, the absence of basic financial processes would definitely make financial impropriety easier to undertake and harder to detect.”
Concerns have also been raised about use of the furlough scheme, from which the ACS received £54,548 in 2020 through to January 2021.
UNTIL November 2024, the ACS was chaired by the then Bishop of Wakefield, the Rt Revd Tony Robinson. In November 2023, the whistle-blowing trustee raised a criticism concerning the conduct of each Bishop Robinson and Canon Smith.
The trustee complained that, after that they had asked for a gathering of the trustees without the overall secretary present, Bishop Robinson had breached confidentiality by informing the overall secretary. Canon Smith had subsequently written to the trustee an email describing the trustee’s conduct as “very destructive”.
“I actually have merely asked just a few basic questions and requested a gathering of Trustees/Directors to hunt to enhance the charity’s functioning . . . and I actually have been met with deep hostility,” the trustee wrote. Their dossier raises a priority that several trustees, including the then chair, Bishop Robinson, had exceeded their nine-year terms.
The criticism was considered by the brand new chair, the Bishop of Beverley, the Rt Revd Stephen Race. In a letter sent in February 2025, he informed the previous trustee that complaints a couple of breach of confidentiality and Canon Smith’s email had been upheld. It stated that the trustees had “sought advice from charity law specialists so as to make sure that ACS’s governance is fit for purpose and strengthened in any areas identified as a part of the governance review”. No further response to the 53 questions raised within the dossier was supplied.
The dossier — referred to within the annual report as a “corporate governance criticism” — prompted the charity to refer itself to the Charity Commission.
Last month, the Charity Commission said that it didn’t have “any lively complaints or concerns” concerning the ACS. It had ruled that the charity was “taking appropriate steps, including an internal review of the charity’s governance. As such, there was no regulatory role for the Commission at the moment.” But it continued to “engage with the charity to watch changes to its governance”.
A press release from the ACS said that the trustees were “in regular contact with the Commission and, step-by-step, are addressing the varied issues raised. It wouldn’t be appropriate to comment on specific areas still under investigation. The Trustees are fully committed to transparency, scrutiny and accountability and to implementing a structure of governance as advocated by the Charity Commission and are working with skilled advisers where appropriate to attain this. The Charity can be fully committed to continuing to serve its beneficiaries because it has done for the past 190 years.”
It is known that Canon Smith has been on compassionate leave for several months. In March and April this yr, the ACS agreed £243,000 value of grants to parishes and says that it’s actively encouraging applications. This compares with £448,989 up to now six years. It now has a conflicts-of-interest policy in place, a register of interests, and a finance committee. The charity was unable to comment on worker matters.
The trustee’s November 2023 letter concludes: “I would love the ACS to assume a central, and a positive, role within the Catholic movement throughout the Church of England. For that to occur, major changes are required. If nothing else, we owe it to those that sacrificed a lot to present us that Catholic life. This includes those on meagre incomes who’ve donated so generously to the ACS over so a few years.”
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