Diocese of Truro 'sells off the family silver' to fund ten-year plan for 'Change and Renewal'

The Diocese of Truro has approved a radical plan to use reserves to fund its ten-year Plan for Change and Renewal, ignoring wide-spread concern from churchgoers across Cornwall.  Click here to read the official report of the decision by the thinly-attended Diocesan Synod on 18 November 2023.  Save The Parish Cornwall's Martin Saunders argued strongly against this short-term approach, saying Church House's approach was 'profligacy' which would make it harder for future generations. Read on for the text of his speech.

 A better title for this paper would be "Selling off the family silver"

All that we are doing is that we are relying on the charity of our forebears to make life easier for ourselves at the expense of our successors.

I repeat. All that we are doing is that we are relying on the charity of our forebears to make life easier for ourselves at the expense of our successors.

The diocese have held dangling in front of us what they think to be lovely carrots. Agree with this proposal and your MMF will be reduced. But I urge you to think more carefully. Think of situations where you know spending capital has been great in the short term, only to leave the person or company poorer in the long run. We must not allow our profligacy to make it harder for future generations.

We have been very fortunate to have been left substantial funds by our forebears. As I wrote in my paper commenting on the budget consultation:

"My basic conclusion on this core proposal is that, as temporary trustees of monies bequeathed to us by our predecessors, we have a fundamental duty to pass on those monies in full to our successors. We should only use the current actual income from the assets to support the current church, particularly the priesthood."

Yes, of course we must keep MMF down, but that should be done by cutting down our overhead costs, particularly at Church House, and also non-PCC/parish based mission.

No-where in the paper do the authors state which funds they intend to use. In reality, there are only four funds totalling about £111 million that can be used, namely:

Pastoral

9.9

Parsonage

48.7

        (these two funds control the parsonage houses and the stock exchange investments relating to sold             parsonage houses)

Board Houses

14.2

the history of the derivation of this fund and its assets is a strange one. The fund now holds sundry houses which, operationally, are different to parsonage houses,


Stipends Capital

38.8

this is a capital endowment fund, represented by glebe land and investments, the income from which is to support the parish priesthood.

The proposal in front of us is to spend £22 million (about a fifth) of these funds over the next ten years, of course front end loaded, to support ever increasing revenue deficits. How much of this sum can be raised by selling houses from the Parsonage and Board Houses Funds remains to be seen but, in reality the one fund most likely to be attacked, using the Total return mechanism, is the Stipends Capital Account. All this would mean is that we would have less revenue income to reduce the MMF call.

The ever increasing revenue deficit must be of enormous concern to us, but it must not be 'sorted' by using capital to flind the deficit.

The detailed discussion of how to sort the deficit is the next agenda item, when we meet as members of the Company. But, for example, do we really need seven senior clergy, without any parish responsibilities, and do we really need 35 whole time equivalent staff in Church House, when we are budgetting for only 54 stipendiary clergy (excluding curates) in post? No, let's keep our capital intact and sort the budget deficit in the proper way.

I urge you please to vote against this proposal.

 As unease spreads about Church House plans - known as On The Way - which will result in radical restructuring of the C of E in Cornwall, Save The Parish Cornwall supporter Sue McClaughry has started a petition calling for a moratorium. Please click here to sign.