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Funding the Church's mission

Spending plans

The Church of England costs just over £1.1 billion a year to run. Over three- quarters of its income comes from dioceses and parishes, mostly from members’ giving.

The Commissioners contributed £192.7 million in 2008, approximately one-sixth of the Church's total running costs. The largest share goes on clergy pensions; other support includes parish ministry and the work of bishops and cathedrals.

Our actuary's latest update as at December 2008 shows that, while the proportion of the fund needed for pensions has increased from 28.7% to 38.8%, planned distributions for 2008-2010 remain affordable. The smoothing mechanism used in the actuary’s calculations in effect builds up a reserve to help maintain distributions in leaner years.

We and the Archbishops’ Council are holding conferences involving bishops, deans and diocesan representatives to aid thinking about future spending priorities.

Supporting parish ministry and mission

Our payments for parish mission and ministry support totalled £41.8 million. £27.8 million went to the dioceses with least resources, with 15 dioceses receiving grants of over £1.0 million.

£4.8 million was distributed to dioceses as mission development funding for a wide variety of innovative projects.

The Church Urban Fund received an additional £0.3 million.

We have allocated £7.25 million between fifteen dioceses facing significant challenges and opportunities in areas of new housing and other development.

Supporting clergy in retirement

Our total spending on pension benefits for clergy, spouses and dependants was £107.9 million. We also provide some capital towards the Pensions Board’s retirement housing scheme for the clergy. The scheme in total provides almost 2,700 properties for retired clergy and their spouses.

Bishops and cathedrals

We fund stipends and pension contributions for bishops, deans and two residentiary canons at each cathedral.

We fund bishops’ support staff, office and working costs, totalling £16.0 million in 2008. We have introduced a new budgeting system for working costs which will give bishops more flexibility in managing their spending, plus a continuing relationship with us to enable benchmarking and economies of scale.

We increased from 18 to 24 the number of hybrid cars driven by bishops, with a view to lower environmental impact. In time we expect to include more such cars in our fleet.

We spent £7.3 million on maintaining diocesan bishops’ houses as a base for their ministry, a workplace and family home. In 2008 we undertook six refurbishment schemes, including at Bishopthorpe Palace at York.

We provided £2.9m in grants to cathedrals, targeted on those with least resources. They generally use this money to pay for lay staff posts, from the administrator and finance officer role to musicians and leaders of educational and outreach programmes.