GRANTS that dioceses must bid for will remain a major technique of distributing the Church Commissioners’ funds — set to total £1.6 billion over the following three years — it was confirmed on Monday.
Asked in regards to the “mixed record” of the projects funded to this point, and an absence of transparency about results (News, 16 May; Features, 8 November 2024), the chair of the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMIIB), Carl Hughes, argued that “the evidence that we’ve got of the advantages and outcomes which have come from that investment have actually been very positive, and there’s actually quite a whole lot of information that is obtainable referring to individual projects and their outcomes.”
The Triennium Funding Working Group, which determines how you can allocate the cash made available by the Commissioners, announced the plans on Monday, alongside publication of the Commissioners’ annual report. The Commissioners secured a return of 10.3 per cent in 2024, taking the fund to £11.1 billion. In total, £1.6 billion is to be distributed between 2026 and 2029, up from £1.2 billion in the present triennium (News, 13 May 2022), already the biggest distribution within the Church’s history.
Much of the planned distribution has already been announced. In January, a shake-up of funding flows between the Archbishops’ Council and dioceses, including the abolition of diocesan apportionment, was announced (News, 31 January). The package is anticipated to enable dioceses to extend clergy stipends to meet up with inflation since 2011.
On Monday, the Archbishops’ Council advisable a ten.7-per-cent rise in clergy stipends, to come back into effect next April (to £33,350 for the national minimum stipend, and £34,950 for the national stipend benchmark).
Pension rises were announced last month (News, 23 May). On Monday, it was announced that additional financial support of greater than £95 million for clergy retirement housing had been agreed, “each to upgrade existing Church-provided retirement rental properties and to enable these to proceed to be an option for brand spanking new applicants — providing long-term security of tenure on a below-market rent”.
This is along with “investment in latest initiatives to enhance decisions for clergy once they retire”. This will include latest Church-backed mortgage products with banks or constructing societies, and access to free independent financial advice at “crucial stages in ministry” — something proposed in a consultation last yr (News, 2 February 2024).
The Church of England Pensions Board received a grant of £25.8 million in 2024 from the Archbishops’ Council towards the prices of clergy retirement housing. Of this, £19.7 million was funded by the Commissioners “as a response to near-term cost pressures on the CHARM scheme as a consequence of increasing financial challenges, including rising inflation, high rates of interest, significantly increasing demand and more stringent regulation”.
This follows £9 million of additional funding for CHARM agreed by the Archbishops’ Council in 2023 (News, 17 November 2023). Last yr, the Pensions Board warned that the scheme required “an enormous and increasing investment from the Church and it is tough to assume how this could proceed because it is”, putting the annual cost at £20 million a yr (News, 24 November 2023). Monday’s announcement suggests a change of heart.
Introducing the plans, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, who chaired the Triennium Funding Working Group, said that a recurrent theme of “extensive consultation” across the Church was that “the well-being of our clergy was really vital. Clergy are at the guts of the whole lot we do within the Church. . . In the spending plans that we put together we reflected the will to make sure that clergy are recognised and affirmed through a spread of various elements to support their welfare.”
Grants agreed by the SMIIB remain a major technique of distributing the funds: the entire available over the three years is ready to rise by almost nine per cent, to £416.4 million. This will include Lowest Income Communities Funding of £133.5 million, up from £91 million. There might be £48.1 million to support cathedrals.
Few independent evaluations of SMIIB-funded projects have been published in full. The Board’s latest report confirms that, last yr, 12 evaluations were commissioned. A spokesperson confirmed that “the evaluations are circulated to a limited audience but not made public. The exception to that is when the diocese itself plans to publish the complete evaluation.”
On Monday, Mr Hughes told the Church Times: “The approach that we’re taking through SMMI is to ask and encourage dioceses to think strategically within the long-term reasonably than simply focusing the whole lot on day-to-day challenges.
“Hitherto . . . the evidence that we’ve got of the advantages and outcomes which have come from that investment have actually been very positive, and there’s actually quite a whole lot of information that is obtainable referring to individual projects and their outcomes. . . Where we’ve got invested particularly parishes through the programme that has given rise to considerable growth by way of people coming to faith in discipleship in giving and in addition in parish share.”
He continued: “We must be absolutely honest about what works and what doesn’t. With our whole programme of this scale it will be remarkable if each thing that we invested in was a rip-roaring success, and clearly one in every of the explanations for specializing in learning is to really make sure that we do learn from past experience. . . I’m an actual believer in transparency in financial matters.”
The First Church Estates Commissioner, Alan Smith, described the distribution as “the biggest within the Church’s history” and “the results of careful and disciplined stewardship by the Church Commissioners’ assets committee . . .
“The three-year funding process is a fragile and complicated balancing act, because it must ensure intergenerational equity, being fair and simply to the Church of today and the Church of the long run. We are operating in volatile and unpredictable economic and financial market conditions and against a posh geopolitical backdrop. We due to this fact must proceed to be sensible in our management of the distributions.”
The funding plans include £200 million of “time-limited support” for dioceses over the following nine years, of which £100 million might be in the following three years. The aim is to “address short term financial pressures and fund existing ministry costs whilst waiting for missional interventions to translate into improved financial health”.
Mr Smith said on Monday that, with some funding put aside for “one-off time-limited purposes . . . we expect and are planning for distributions for 2029 to 2031 and 2032 to 2034 to be barely lower”. Last yr, he warned that the Commissioners’ history included “improperly thought-through commitments, including how we had shaped stipend and pensions packages” (News, 1 March, 2024).
The announcement comes against a backdrop of diocesan deficits calculated to succeed in £62 million in 2024 (News, 21 June 2024), with 23 dioceses holding lower than three months’ money reserves.
One diocesan secretary has identified “a shift in the main target of ‘strategic’ decision making . . . away from the bishops of their diocese to the NCIs”. He observed that “the financial flows of the past 25 years have disrupted the traditional balance of authority within the Church” (News, 31 January), and warned that “the present model of ministry funded principally through giving could also be unsustainable in lots of places and caution applied to easily doing more of the identical.”
On Monday, the Save the Parish campaign group welcomed the plans, including the abolition of apportionment and “a major increase in support for the Church of England’s poorest parishes” for which the group had explicitly advocated.
But the chairman, the Revd Marcus Walker, said that the announcement was “not all good: they’ve decided to tie that cash up of their failed Vision and Strategy and make parishes dance like performing monkeys for the cash that’s rightfully theirs. We had hoped they’d learned from the costly failures of the last decade not to do that.”
The Save the Parish press release said: “It is evident that the Church of England’s substantial resources might be further rebalanced to strengthen parish life. The current imbalance in how these funds are allocated implies that many parishes — especially in probably the most deprived areas — are left with fewer clergy and fewer support than they might have, making it harder to supply regular worship, pastoral care, and vital community presence.”
It said: “The central Church continues to make parishes ‘jump through hoops’ to access funds that by law and by legacy, must be theirs.” Mr Hughes has said that delivering grants to parishes directly could be an “administrative nightmare” (News, 12 July 2024).
The Church Commissioners’ return of 10.3 per cent follows 4.1 per cent in 2023, and five per cent in 2022, taking the common to eight.6 per cent over the past decade. The goal is the CIPH inflation rate, plus 4 per cent: 7.5 per cent. Last yr, Mr Smith warned that “we’re on the cusp of how the markets are operating . . . we should be sensible by way of how we invest and the way we commit for the period ahead” (News, 12 July 2024).
The report says that returns were boosted by “the very strong environment for equity markets”, but warns that “The current geopolitical environment presents significant uncertainties for the Church Commissioners’ investment portfolio, with ongoing trade tariffs, global conflicts, and heightened market volatility all contributing to a more unpredictable landscape.”
Acknowledging the Commissioners’ ethical-investment approach, Mr Smith said on Monday: “We imagine that values drive value, and that these results and the planned distributions exhibit that ethical investing and fund growth are complementary.”
On the matter of the grants provided through the SMIIB, the annual report notes that “a specialist grant management system is within the means of being procured to further enhance the monitoring and oversight of grants (evaluating each the use and impact of the funds invested).”
