Please object: Diocese plans to sell off Cornwall's vicarages

There is still still time to object. Rev Simon Cade (Truro Diocesan Secretary) has published a paper about the budget for the coming years - and central to it is a plan to sell off Cornwall's vicarages to raise money. This is- of course - selling the family silver. There is a growing surge of opinion against Diocesan plans to 'restructure' the Church of England in Cornwall. Click here to read a dossier compiling the objections of people across Cornwall. There is still time  - just (the deadline is 23 September) - to push back against the budget proposals.  Objections can be brief - or extended. The important thing is to let Rev Cade know your thoughts. Click here to read his paper in full.  His email is simon.cade@truro.anglican.org

As usual, the key points are buried in a misleadingly benign 'story-telling' narrative.  Save The Parish Cornwall's Neil Wallis sets out his thoughts below:

"As we’ve seen in so many Simon Cade papers, the diocesan secretary begins by setting out a totally deceptive scene for this discussion.

In the second paragraph of his introduction it says "our diocesan plans are mostly formed by combining the deanery plans”, when in fact the reverse is true. The deanery plans that arose came after the diocese totally dictated the process and direction of the deanery team thinking by sending in its own advisors to set the parameters, dictating the budgets available, appointing the OTW planning teams, then micro-managing their work.

He talks about this plan targeting "the church at its most local” when the result of OTW diocese-wide has meant less priests in post, experienced priests quitting, serious difficulties in recruiting new clergy put off by the role and scale of Oversight Ministry, less parishes and bigger benefices proposed, a deliberate fire-sale of parsonages with the inevitable eventual result of smaller congregations and tragically church closures. Watch out, small churches across Cornwall!

And then there is the Transforming Mission elephant in the room…..

*First core principle. "it notes the significant growth in the wealth of the Diocesan Board of Finance shown in the strength of our balance sheet (the value of our assets) and proposes using a substantial part of that wealth in the next ten years to support the local church.”

In fact, what is promised later in the document shows that, despite the diocese’s huge wealth what is actually on offer is relatively tiny.

*Second core principle. This contains many grand sounding apparent promises. But beware, they come with deep caveats. For instance, it says “increase clergy numbers”. I’m all for that - except the words are preceded by the phrase “where possible”. And those weasel words “where possible” are attached to just about every mention of funding increasing stipendiary clergy in the document - and don’t forget clergy under the current regime has fallen from 82 pre-pandemic to arguably 54 now (and that was before our very own rural dean quit for greener pastures up-country).

And though these numbers sound large, basic maths tell us an extra £11m shared between 12 deaneries over 10 years per capita boils down to about £100,000 per deanery per year. So what will actually be the share for each PCC? Will the PCCs actually receive it by right? And who will decided how it was distributed. Anything is better than nothing, true, IF it actually gets to the parishes….

Similarly, an extra £2m to help maintain our churches! Except its for 10 years. So £200,000 a year. And there’s 300 churches. Which means about £700 per year per church on average….. Again, better than nothing but it’s not a game-changer for our church wardens and treasurer, is it?

Yet again, grand sounding promises that cursory closer examination reveals are of little substance. Yet Cornwall is per capita one of the richest diocese in England. And of course very large sums of LICF are also promised by the church commissioners, together with the “profits dividend” promised by the Archbishops last year.

Virtually NOTHING is said about cutting the notoriously bloated staffing at Church House, embarrassingly exposed in Parliament as one of the worst in England and still growing. The numbers of penpushers there should be cut in half, or at least by 25%, immediately with a total freeze on hiring.

The one unqualified totally stark promise in the whole document is the plan to sell off the family jewellery - they’re selling off the parsonages that traditionally housed our priests and vicars and curates in the midst of our communities.

It states on Page Six " To provide houses for current clergy plans, to allow some flexibility, and some for potential growth in the number of clergy we will need about 85 or 90 houses, but we own almost 130, so part of the plan is to dispose of between 20 and 30 houses that we know are surplus.”

Which it admits will raise a handy £10m, or almost all that “extra” £11m they promise at the beginning.

But how short-sighted can that be? They’re keeping just enough to house the “where possible” growth in clergy numbers that will anyway take stipend numbers back simply to pre-pandemic levels - which was already a decline on previous years.

They’ve publicly said that that “target” is about 82 “by this time next year” but not whether that figure is for fully-qualified stipendiary priests or includes curates etc too.

I’m a member of Save The Parish Cornwall,  and we’re campaigning for a minimum 100 fully experienced stipendiary priests in Cornwall again, each caring for and providing the traditional sacrament in a maximum of three churches each. Quite separately, as an individual and member of this PCC, I personally support that idea.

This “selling the parsonages” plan totally limits the chance of achieving that, or even further growth in clergy numbers. Yet as we know, all research has emphatically shown that higher clergy numbers lead to larger congregations.

And it is a reasonable assumption that the diocese will sell off the most attractive and lucrative parsonages first. So what will be left for any new clergy we try to attract to Cornwall?

But is the plan even moral?!

Auctioning off homes that clergy could use while curing souls, spreading the word of God, providing pastoral care, and giving the sacrament. Selling them instead - almost certainly - to rich incomers as second homes or AirB&Bs and in the process depriving local Cornish people of the opportunity to rent them as many do at present?

I urge PCCs to speak out against this plan. 

A possible motion:"This PCC rejects this document, demands a new plan that restores to the diocese of Truro a minimum of 82 fully experienced stipendiary clergy (not including curates) With a target for more; a significant reduction of at least 25% in the budget and staffing of Church House; and a total immediate suspension of the selling of parsonages.”