Updated Finance Pages
We have just published Church of England financial data updated for 2023 here on the Save The Parish website.
This is the most recent financial data that has become available through the annual publishing of accounts. Our methodology has been shared with and is supported by the central Church of England finance staff.
The accounts reveal a shocking imbalance between Parishes and ‘Head Office’.
- The Parishes have very few assets but, mainly thanks to parishioners’ generosity, they pull in a colossal annual income of £1bn
- The Parishes paid £315m (in 2023) to their Dioceses through the Parish Share scheme
- The Dioceses spent £348m on parish ministry (also 2023) and £47m on clergy pension contributions, making £395m in total.
- The difference between parish share ‘income’ and parish ministry expenditure (£315m-£395m) is £80m (2022 was similar at £84m). Dividing that into the £574m Head Office investment income, it represents 14%. This tells us that only 14% of Head Office investment income goes directly to parishes; 86% goes elsewhere!
- Moreover, large amounts of ‘diocese’ investment income come from glebe land, which was originally donated to parishes, but transferred to dioceses for administrative reasons in the 1970s. So it should be managed by them to produce the best outcome for parishes.
Over the last 2 years there has been a decrease of 3% in overall Church of England expenditure on ‘Parish Ministry’ and a 2% increase in ‘Diocesan Support, Training & Admin.’ So parish support is down and overheads are up. The imbalance between Parishes and ‘Head Office’ continues to get worse year by year.
