GIVEN a “significant difference of opinion” within the General Synod over the setting of parochial fees, the Archbishops’ Council has scheduled a fringe meeting to explore possible ways forward.
In 2023, the Synod carried an amended diocesan-synod motion from Blackburn which asked the Archbishops’ Council to “design, fund and implement a time-limited, regional trial of providing weddings freed from all statutory fees” (News, 11 July 2023).
The following 12 months, the Synod was told that, after “considerable work” by teams at Church House, it had “reluctantly been concluded that such a regional experiment can’t be designed in a way which could realistically provide the information intended and that attempting to accomplish that would incur disproportionate effort, especially by the parish clergy, and price. Alternative approaches to generating such data have proved to be dead-ends.”
The Archbishops’ Council published a paper last week setting out its pondering on the best way forward. It suggests that there exists inside tthe Synod “a big difference of opinion whether the practice of nationally-set parochial fees should proceed”. At a Synod meeting in 2019, the Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Philip North, launched a spontaneous “one-man revolt”, calling for the abolition of fees (News, 1 March 2019). It was unsuccessful.
Four years later, members voted in favour of a draft order capping the rise in fees at five per cent relatively than in keeping with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which stood at 9.9 per cent (News, 17 February 2023). In 2024, this was prolonged until the tip of 2026 (News, 1 March 2024). In 2023, a non-public member’s motion calling on the Council to set the fees for funeral services at nil was signed by “only a few” members before lapsing, the paper says.
The current annual income from parochial fees is estimated at about £70 million a 12 months, of which diocesan boards of finance receive just over one third and PCCs slightly below two-thirds. The paper warns that “abolishing parochial fees would put considerable additional pressure on the diocesan economy directly and possibly not directly via parish share”.
Setting out the pondering of the Diocesan Finances Review Steering Group, which considered fees as a part of its work, the paper suggests that locally set fees or donations won’t raise as much as the present arrangement, and that DBFs might lose out. The administrative burden, potential parliamentary opposition, and the “risk of reputational issues attributable to differences in fee levels” are also mentioned.
The paper concludes that it might be “sensible to undertake some preparatory work with General Synod before deciding whether to embark on any legislative changes” and that a fringe meeting has been arranged to get a way of members’ views.
A recent Parochial Fees Order will have to be put to the Synod for consideration next 12 months.
