A MOTION from Chester diocesan synod, which expressed regret that 12 mainland dioceses received no Lowest Income Communities (LInC) funding, was debated by the General Synod on the Tuesday evening.
This was despite the incontrovertible fact that these dioceses contain 268 parishes that were among the many 25 per cent most “socially deprived”, the Synod was told.
The motion called on the Church Commissioners and the Archbishops’ Council to review the formula used to distribute the funding. It asked to maneuver to 1 “that accrues a complete to every diocese based on evaluation of existing published data regarding individual parishes” and which takes under consideration socio-economic data and parish population, to supply extra support to work amongst the biggest socially deprived populations.
Introducing the talk, the Revd Christopher Blunt (Chester), a rector in Stockport, said that LInC totalled £133 million over the subsequent three years: an “eye-wateringly large amount of cash, for which we’re thankful”. LiNC aimed to support ministry in probably the most deprived parts of the country. It was the “cornerstone of the Church of England’s commitment to the poor”. But it also had a “blind spot” that needed to be addressed: ineligible dioceses contained parishes in areas of maximum deprivation. Chester received no LInC funding, and his parish was among the many one per cent most deprived within the country.
The “generous” system within the diocese meant that his parish was asked for under 45 per cent of a typical parish share, while wealthy ones paid as much as 145 per cent. The demographically wealthy parishes found this tough to satisfy. “When you might be a part of a parish where numerous the congregation live and giving out of Universal Credit or PIP [Personal Independence Payment] or state pension, even the wonderful and generous subsidy of 45-per-cent share is tough to satisfy.” Was LiNC funding not designed for parishes similar to this?
The motion — “born out of frustration” — was “modest”, he suggested. It sought to maneuver to a parish-level assessment. “To say I’m upset by the response is an understatement.” He urged the Synod to “forget any scaremongering concerning the impact on rural parishes”. The motion proposed a “proportionately modest transfer from middle-class parishes in LInC-funded dioceses to the nationally most deprived parishes wherever they’re positioned”.
A parish-level assessment opened up the potential for passing LInC funding on to the parishes, he said. This was a “far simpler approach to the disbursement”. Much of LInC didn’t reach deprived parishes or couldn’t be accounted for, he said. This equated to tens of thousands and thousands, “potentially top-sliced to fill diocesan deficits as if parochial deficits didn’t matter”.
Canon Andy Salmon (Manchester) spoke against the motion due to effect on the poorest dioceses and parishes. “It could go horribly improper,” he said. He supported the principle of redistribution to make sure that funding went to those in need and accepted that there can be winners and losers. “Somebody has to attract a line.” He suggested that the road could even be drawn lower, in order that barely fewer dioceses benefited, “because we’ve got some very needy parishes in our country.”
A former diocesan secretary in Manchester had spoken of visiting a former Bishop of Stockport to debate the potential for redrawing diocesan boundaries to incorporate inside Manchester diocese the parishes, “very wealthy — largely”, in Trafford and Stockport. “Perhaps, if Chester would give us those wealthy parishes, we would consider supporting this motion.”
Emma Robarts (St Albans) supported the motion. “LInC funding is the difference between ministry surviving and ministry collapsing in places where the Church of England is usually the last functioning institution.” The 2024 accounts showed that “we will afford more LInC. Money is concerning the only problem the Church doesn’t have.”
The Church Funding Update for the Synod acknowledged the challenges of sustaining stipendiary ministry, however the proposed treatment was a programme of labor concluding in 2027, when a debate can be held. “This is classic administrative capture: understanding their answer before we’re allowed to debate it. The problem is immediate and urgent,” she said. “The need is evidenced, and the accountability structures are in place. We don’t need more data, more modelling, or more consultation. We need deeds, not words.”
She warned: “We are not looking for the legacy of Vision and Strategy to be the death through neglect of the parishes.” The plight of the “poor vicarless parishes” reminded her of the joke concerning the tinker’s donkey: “He had just taught it to go without food when it died.” The Synod needed to send a transparent message now. “The threat to the parish system is now.”
The Revd Graham Kirk-Spriggs (Norwich) was not convinced concerning the need to alter the system. He wanted assurances that the funding wouldn’t be taken away from the parishes already in receipt of it. Parish share was really necessary, he said. “Things just like the Ephesian Fund [News, 30 January] are deeply unhelpful, because, really, we won’t need as much LInC funding if wealthy churches weren’t siphoning off money to pay into their very own silos.”
The Revd Chris Collins (Leicester) said that, were it not for LInC funding “there can be serious questions on the sustainability of ministry in our context. . . Without it, I fear there can be no church in ten years’ time.”
Geoff Crawford/Church TimesThe Revd Chris Collins (Leicester)
As a single church, they received about £38,000 a 12 months in a top-two-per-cent-deprived parish of nearly 11,000. Yet, Mr Blunt’s three-church parish of about 20,000 people, which was in the highest one per cent most deprived, received no funding. He supported the motion and requested more cash from the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMMIB). His “back-of-the envelope” calculations suggested that extending LInC to the highest ten per cent of probably the most deprived parishes in non-LInC dioceses would cost £2 million to £2.5 million. “The words ‘postcode lottery’ spring to mind.”
Carl Hughes, who chairs the Finance Committee, proposed an amendment “in a constructive spirit”. The original motion expressed “a very important and heartfelt concern”. The amendment would have the Synod commission the review requested within the motion without specifying prematurely the precise data sets or technical mechanisms that have to be used. It also suggested that this must be addressed along with the broader funding framework.
He said: “Whilst I remain concerned that we support probably the most deprived parishes within the country, I do have concerns that the approach proposed moves decisions about how best to support local parishes from diocesan leadership to national church bodies. It would also remove accountability over such funding from diocesan synods.” LInC funding was “primarily used” to support stipendiary posts, which were under the oversight of diocesan bishops. The recent light-touch reporting for LInC meant that its use was now “transparent” for every diocesan synod.
“In my opinion, using a national formula to find out local deployment is completely not desirable and indicative of a level of centralisation that many on this chamber complain about frequently.” Any review must bear in mind the resources that dioceses themselves could deploy, “and shouldn’t weaken the core virtue of mutuality of support amongst parishes inside a diocese”.
Mr Blunt suggested that the amendment was saying “Please trust the Church Commissioners and the Archbishops’ Council to do their jobs. OK, but actually I do. And this motion is much more positive than I feel you might be giving us credit for.” The responsibility was not being moved from the diocese to the national Church, but from the diocese to the parish, he said.
The Triennium Funding Working Group had shown that a considerable amount of funding was not making its technique to probably the most deprived parishes. The change was not expected to end in “financial shocks across the Church, but we do expect it to right an injustice and provides us, because the Church of England, the best to say to the nation that we value ministry in every deprived community”. He resisted the amendment.
Jason Clarke (Chester) spoke of his parish, Blacon, situated on a big council estate of between 15,000 and 20,000 people. It couldn’t afford the parish share last 12 months. The incumbent worked “incredibly hard”, and the church did an enormous amount of labor locally, he said. LInC funding “might mean that we get to maintain our incumbent, and, when she retires in a couple of years’ time, that we are going to get one other full-time incumbent”.
The Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Philip North, supported the amendment. “The growing vibrancy of the urban Church on this nation owes a fantastic deal to the LInC funding.” If carried unamended, the motion could threaten that by reducing disbursements to existing recipients, he said. “In the Church, wealthier areas should support more deprived areas. That’s a basic principle that goes back to Acts 2. This motion, unless backed by a big real-terms increase in LInC disbursement, undermines that principle. It implies that funding will flow into wealthier dioceses on the direct expense of more deprived dioceses.”
It would, he said, “undermine fastidiously drawn-up nine-year plans”. There was a perception that some dioceses weren’t using LInC as intended. But Blackburn diocese didn’t recognise data on this, and the Synod must not be misled by it. In his diocese, the entire money in LInC was spent on Lancashire parishes that were within the 25 per cent most deprived nationally, he said.
Julie Dziegiel (Oxford) spoke of allocating parish share over the course of a few years, and was aware of the complexity. She feared that the unamended motion risked unintended consequences. The second most deprived church in her deanery had some of the income-adjusted for size within the deanery. Money could find yourself within the pockets of parishes that didn’t actually need it. She urged the Synod to “watch out”.
Andrew Gray (St Edmundsbury & Ipswich) suggested that the feeding of the five thousand “wouldn’t have happened had General Synod been involved”. Rather than faith and hope, there was “fear that if we pass this, something will go improper”. The motion was simply asking the Church Commissioners to review the formula and bear in mind two sets of information. It was not tying the hands of the central Church. “Anyone would think, from a number of the responses, that what it was actually asking for is the nuclear access codes.”
The amendment was a rewrite of the motion, telling the diocese of Chester, “Don’t worry about it, central Church knows what it’s doing,” he said. He urged the Synod to withstand the amendment. “We have a funding crisis in our poorest communities.” The Commissioners were sitting on “record amounts of funding. So, why don’t we, only for a change, do something somewhat bit dangerous and out our faith in God, if that isn’t an excessive amount of to ask?”
The Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, supported Bishop North.
The Archdeacon of Ashford, the Ven. Darren Miller (Canterbury), supported the amendment. He had been “horrified” by data suggesting that greater than half the LInC funding was going to parishes outside the 25 per cent most deprived, but his diocesan office had told him that only 8.31 per cent went to such parishes. These were now a part of larger single parishes. The motion was trying to parishes reasonably than to communities and the local situation, he said. “The stats don’t sustain with reality on the bottom.”
The amendment was carried.
The Revd Marcus Walker (London) said: “For the Church to mean what we are saying in following our Lord’s command to care for the poor, we must make sure that the parishes taking care of the most-deprived communities are properly funded.” The LInC did this only “partially”, and the way it was distributed was “worrying”, he said. A “good variety of dioceses don’t pass on this money to the parishes in query”.
Last 12 months, 30 per cent of the cash didn’t reach these parishes, he said. He spoke of a diocese that he had visited during which churches with LInC funding of £56,000 and £78,000 “tagged” to them were each told that they may not have a parish priest because they didn’t meet their parish share. But the diocese had collected the LInC money. “We must tag this money to the parishes, and we want that cash to go to the parishes.”
The Revd Jane Richards (Chelmsford) supported the motion. She had previously served in an estates parish that benefited from LInC funding, enabling it to have a full-time stipendiary priest and to pay its share in full. But, with the lack of Darlow funding and other funding changes, she had not been replaced when she left, and a plurality had been formed with the parish round the corner, “stretching resources even further”. The community “felt let down”, she said. In her post as Continuing Ministerial Development Adviser for the Barking Area, she had develop into “ever more aware of the impact of a scarcity of resources in rural communities”.
The Archbishop of York, grateful to the diocese of Chester, said that LInC funding must be further increased. “However, you can’t separate out the poverty of a parish from the poverty of a diocese. The things that keep me awake at night . . . is how we support ministry in Middlesbrough and Hull. We, as a diocese, must give you the option to have some agency with the LInC funding we receive, since it goes to pay stipends.” The money have to be accounted for, but “the figures which were presented . . . Many of us bishops don’t recognise them.” A review was needed, nevertheless it have to be joined up with other reviews concerning the disbursement of funds, he concluded.
Mr Blunt identified that three of the 4 speakers in favour of the amendment had “central church positions”. He was upset that it had been carried. “There is enough fish to go round, not that we might comprehend it today.” He concluded: “We are usually not in search of a radical upheaval. . . For the sake of a Christian presence in every community, we cannot let this postcode lottery proceed.”
The motion was carried. It read:
That this Synod: recognising that areas of deprivation exist across all dioceses, call upon the Church Commissioners and Archbishops’ Council to review the formula and processes used to distribute Lowest Income Communities Funding (LInC), as a part of the broader review of the Church’s funding framework for ministry, and report back to this Synod any alternative approaches to the distribution of LInC that align with the outcomes of this wider review.
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