Diocese of Truro's Halloween budget - 10 key takeaways from draft report for November Synod
It's no surprise that Church House will have wanted to keep this under wraps - it's their own 'Halloween' budget. This isn't a budget for radical change. Rather a budget to manage a Diocese in chaos. A budget with a worryingly large deficit and a plan to plug ever increasing holes with fast-diminishing reserves. To read the details - due to be discussed at the Diocesan Synod on 23 November 2024 - click here.
In the budget, the Diocese reneges on a public promise to Save The Parish Cornwall to stop a decline in clergy numbers: numbers are set to fall still further in 2025. Yet again, Church House costs will increase (despite pledges to cut them). And for the first time, there is a clear admission of resistance in the deaneries to On The Way restructuring plans - and an admission that the plans need to be looked at further. The draft budget repeatedly implies that the anomalies between Diocesan budget plans and reality have been due to this resistance. Save The Parish Cornwall welcomes this long overdue recognition of flaws in the On The Way process.
To cut to the quick, here are 10 key takeaways....
1. The planned deficit will widen to £3.973 million from a budgeted £3.266 million in 2024. In fact, the expected 2024 budget deficit is now expected to be a painful £5.008 million.
BACKGROUND: 'Fruitful and sustainable' was the mantra of On The Way restructuring (oft stated by the former Bishop of Truro the Rt Rev Philip Mounstephen and the now acting Bishop of Truro, the Rt Rev Hugh Nelson). Clearly, the bitter reality of On The Way has been quite the opposite. An ever-gaping budget deficit is far from fruitful and sustainable.
2. Churches will be asked to pay Church House £3.207 million in MMF (Mission and Ministry Fund) payments - compared to £3.122 million budgeted in 2024. In fact, actual payments in 2024 are now expected to be below budget at £2.941 million.
BACKGROUND: Many churches, disillusioned by the lack of clergy, are starting to withhold MMF payments.
3. The draft budget acknowledges that 'not all parishes are "signed up" to the plans', a reference to widespread dissent in many large deaneries (e.g. Kerrier, Carnmarth South, Powder, Penwith and East Wivelshire) to controversial 'On The Way' proposals. The dissent in many cases centres around a lack of clergy provision, and a movement towards 'Oversight Ministers' administering large clusters of churches. The draft says: "Work continues with the Deanery Implementation Teams (DITs) to establish whether plans need to change to ensure sustainability."
BACKGROUND: Many churchgoers in deaneries where radical On The Way plans have been proposed feel disempowered. This is especially the case in deaneries where Community Interest Companies (CICs) have been set up to employ new workers. In addition, many believe proposed clergy provision is totally insufficient. In Kerrier, the original On The Way plan proposed one rural dean overseeing 23 churches. In Carnmarth South, King Charles Church Falmouth struggles to find a priest to take services.
4. The Diocese will continue to receive considerable funds from the Church Commissioners: Lowest Income Communities Fund (LICF) will rise to £981,000 in 2025 from £948,000 in 2024.
5. Clergy numbers will fall to 58.13 FTE in 2025, from 62.50 in 2024. This is 'due to not having 3 Deans of Area posts and one clergy post reduction in East Wivelshire's Deanery Plan,' the report says. Curate numbers fall drastically to nine in the 2025 budget, from 14.50 budgeted in 2024.
BACKGROUND: This fall is disappointing in view of the acting Bishop of Truro's stated commitment to maintaining clergy numbers. The Rt Rev Hugh Nelson told STPC on 30 September that he was committed to increasing numbers, though failed to give any of the figures foreseen in the draft 2024 budget being drawn up at the time. Since the start of On The Way, Bishop Hugh has repeatedly revealed his commitment to a vision of 'Oversight Ministers' overseeing clusters of churches, and lay ministers, education and youth workers taking on the traditional work of parish priests. It is worth noting that the ill-thought through and now abandoned 'Deans of Area' plan was a typically bureaucratic approach to dealing with grassroot issues i.e. creating further levels of management, rather than putting priests in parishes.
6. Money being spent in 2024 on improvements to parsonages was actually £2 million compared to a budgeted £600,000 - an eyewatering overspend. "There has been a conscious decision to take the opportunity to carry out works while the properties are vacant, and we have made funds available for this to happen," the draft says. In point 9, it reveals a commitment to the Diocese's 'Net Zero' agenda.
BACKGROUND: Earlier this year, the Diocese revealed that extensive work was being done - retro-fitting houses with improved
insulation, solar panels, and air-source heat pumps. "This is not a cheap
process," it said. Is it really necessary to undertake this work in the current fiscal climate?
7. Investment in mission. The Diocese will continue to pour large sums of money from reserves to fund the controversial Transforming Mission initiative, which failed in Highertown, Truro, and has struggled elsewhere (notably in Liskeard, Camborne and Falmouth) to bring in expected numbers of new worshippers and income. A net cost of £196,000 is forecast for 2025. 'Mission funding is also being made available to those deanery's (sic) which don't have TM projects and amounts to £2m over 5-7 years', the report says.
BACKGROUND: There has never been an open and honest assessment of the operation and outcomes of Transforming Mission, a project costing many millions of pounds from the Church Commissioners and Diocesan reserves since 2018 when it was first introduced. When pressed, Diocesan Secretary Simon Cade has said that this was a scheme that had been 'inherited' from a previous Bishop and team, and therefore current Diocesan leaders could not be expected to be fully accountable for it. This clearly does not prevent the Diocese throwing yet still more cash at a failing project.
8. Church House costs will rise to £2.106 million in 2025 from £1.941 million budgeted in 2024. Some of this money is going to be taken from Diocesan reserves, 'along with funding from the national church', the report says.
"We know that if we are to deliver all of the interventions and actions that relate to the strategic change (sic) then more resource (sic) is going to be needed in the central team," the draft says.
BACKGROUND: This completely flies in the face of repeated promises from Cornwall's Bishops that Church House costs and jobs will not rise. Promises prompted by increasingly vocal concern in the parishes about central bureaucracy in the Diocese as On The Way plans have been rolled out - e.g. the expensive appointment of a 'Director for Change and Renewal' and her team.
9. Church House FTE posts to rise in 2025 to 45.9 from 40.6 - a hike of 13.%. This is despite repeated pledges from Cornwall's Bishops over the past three years of On The Way that central costs will not rise. Central employment costs are in reality even higher than this. The report says: "These numbers don't include the people who are consultants for the organisation, the budget for that resource in 2025 is £166k (2024 £211k)."
BACKGROUND: As above.
10. Diocesan reserves are being drained. The report says: "It does cost time and money to implement plans and we have increased resources to enable that to happen with most of those additional costs not being passed on to parishes, so it is not a surprise that there is a deficit budget and of this magnitude."
BACKGROUND: Many On The Way plans have stalled due to local dissent. This means that congregations are not paying MMF. Instead of listening to churchgoers and people on the ground, the Diocese is instead forging ahead with a recipe for disaster, throwing the family silver at the problem rather than returning to the drawing board and asking: Was this really such a good idea in the first place?
CONCLUSION
Most worrying of all is a clear warning in the penultimate paragraph of the report. Diocesan reserves are not bottomless - even if it were appropriate to spend them in this way.
"As the various plans are being implemented it is becoming apparent that the TDBF (Truro Diocesan Board of Finance) will need to continue to support parishes financially, where the gap between actual ministry costs and MMF contributions remains. While the TDBF has reserves this is not unreasonable but we need to consider the sustainability of that going forward," the report says.
The papers listed below will be discussed at the next Diocesan Synod on Saturday 23 November 2024.
Appendix 2 - 2025 changes compared with 2024 budget
Bishop's Diocesan Council report to 2024 Synod
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