The "New" Commissioners
As part of the reorganisation of the Church's central structures, the Commissioners were re-constituted from 1st January this year. Our membership has been reduced from 95 to 33 and a number of our functions have been transferred to the Archbishops' Council. The Council has taken on responsibility for distributing the money we make available to help pay the clergy stipends (salaries) and our role as Central Stipends Authority in setting recommended stipend levels.
The Commissioners' mission is unchanged. It is to support the Church of England's ministry in areas of need and opportunity. Our duty in fulfilling this mission is to maximise the return on assets for the support of our beneficiaries - the Clergy. We continue to play a major role at national level in formalising local proposals for pastoral reorganisation and the future of redundant churches. Our membership, although reduced, continues to reflect our unique dual accountability to Church and State to whom we report annually on our work.
1998 was a difficult year for investors with volatile world stock markets. It was also a very troubled time for those in agriculture. Nevertheless, we produced another good return of 14.5% against the average return of other funds of 14%. Over the last five years our return has been 15.3% against the average fund's 11%.
From 1 January 1998 parishes took on the cost of funding clergy pensions. The Commissioners remain legally responsible for clergy pensions earned from service prior to that date and these will be a substantial cost met from our fund for many years to come. Our total support for the Church's ministry amounted to £158.9 million. We spent £109.6M on pensions provision, of which £23.2M was used to help dioceses and parishes in taking on the cost of paying pensions contributions. We distributed £14.7M to dioceses on a selective basis for stipend support. Over £10M of this was concentrated on the twelve neediest dioceses, with eleven dioceses receiving no selective support. We also paid guaranteed annuities of £5M to clergy in parishes covering all dioceses. We paid the stipends of all diocesan, suffragan and full-time assistant bishops, met the working costs of bishops and made grants towards cathedral staff salaries.
Looking to the future
Our current spending level (excluding the special pensions support from 1998-2002 of up to £65M to help parishes and dioceses take on the cost of funding clergy pensions) is now much closer to the sustainable rate than it was. The willingness of parishes to pay a greater proportion of the costs of ministry has freed the Commissioners from the need to achieve unsustainably high levels of income. This has enabled us to change our investment strategy to concentrate on providing the necessary growth in our investments to pay for our long-term expenditure commitments. We have made significant progress but, largely due to taxation changes on dividends for charities, our expenditure is still slightly more than we estimate that we can afford over the longer term. Despite this, we do not plan any short term changes to our spending until after our actuaries (who advise us on long-term spending and investment plans) conduct their next major review of our fund in 2000. We remain committed to paying up to £65M of transitional pensions support and to paying £20M per annum in parochial ministry support. Our actuaries advise that our plans are unlikely to lead to an adverse consequence for our long-term financial position. In due course, however, we will need to reduce expenditure or improve investment returns further to close this gap.
written by Catherine Skinner of the Church Commissioners
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page last updated 22 AUGUST 1999