Parish Contribution

All parishes in vacancy receive support through the Archdeacons and Area Deans. In many cases there are other ministers who contribute to the ongoing leadership in ministry and mission while an incumbent post is vacant. This includes self-supporting clergy and licensed lay ministers working alongside church officers. So, even when there is no full-time stipendiary incumbent in post, there is still ministry provision in every parish, which has an associated financial cost.

In addition, parishes in vacancy will also be receiving direct ministry support and developing ministry costs (e.g. safeguarding, training in lay ministry etc.) even if they have no stipendiary clergy themselves.

The Archbishops Council currently contributes £1,579,093 (accurate June 2026) towards the mission and ministry costs in the most deprived areas in Leicestershire (where deprivation is calculated using the Index of Multiple Deprivation). This is known as Lowest Income Communities Funding (LInC). Parishes in the most deprived areas across the diocese receive support in providing stipendiary ministry and this is taken into account when allocating clergy to these areas. If the Archbishops' Council did not allocate LInC funding, the diocese would have to find the extra money to keep stipendiary ministry in deprived areas at the same level.

Find out more about LInC funding and how the Diocese allocates this money.

Parish contribution offers are combined across churches in minster communities to assess what level of stipendiary ministry they would be able to support in each community. In the formation of minster communities, parishes are asked to realistically and prayerfully consider both the ministry need in the area and whether they would be able to sustain this ministry going forward. This helps the minster community and the diocese to decide the level of stipendiary ministry that is sustainable within the local area.

Glebe land and other assets constitute most of the Diocese’s assets. These are endowment assets, which, with careful stewardship, have grown beyond inflation since the 1970s.

The return and income from Glebe assets can only be used to fund clergy stipends. This ensures that these historic assets continue to contribute directly to mission provision. This is accounted for within the calculation of the cost of ministry in the diocese. However, the diocesan stipend costs are significantly higher than the annual income from Glebe land. Therefore, there is an increasing need for parish contributions to cover this shortfall.

There may be many reasons that you may struggle to maintain the increase in parish contributions. Where every effort is made to ensure that the cost of ministry to parishes is kept as low as possible, there are times when parishes will struggle.

We are committed to working with parishes that may struggle. If this is the case, please raise your concerns with Laura Taylor in the parish contributions team, who will support you in creating a plan.

An example plan could include:

1. Stewardship, giving and fundraising support
2. Identifying opportunities to reduce costs
3. Supporting in financial planning and budgeting

To help meet the costs of ministry in your parish and minister community, we are scheduling a 1-hour planning meeting with every parish over the first few months of 2027. These meetings will provide an opportunity for PCC representatives to discuss the numbers in more detail and ensure that you have the right support moving forward.

Additional support is available to parishes through our Parish Giving Officer who is able to support with a range of things, including:

• Parish Contributions
• Creating a generous culture
• Support Treasurers and PCCs
• Income generation support
• Support in encouraging generosity
• Preaching and teaching about generosity
• Digital giving
• Legacies
• Training around finances and generosity

Curate training is an essential part of Diocesan life and running costs. Every clergy person was once trained through curacy. The only way we will have future clergy available to appoint into minster community ministry roles is to train them through curacies. It is now common for curates to spend time in multiple contexts during their curacy, providing a breadth of experience and opportunity for ministerial formation. This can, and is likely to, cross minster community boundaries.

We therefore see this as a shared responsibility across the whole diocese, both in parishes and centrally.

We have asked each minster community if they are able to contribute to the costs of curacy to support the training of future clergy. For each minster community, the additional cost we ask them to consider is £41,210. This figure asked for on each letter is a part of this cost based on the proportion of parish contribution that your parish offers within the minster community.

We also recognise that parishes may not be able to commit to the full cost across the  minster community. We commit to supporting curates centrally in the diocese, and to cover any shortfall there may be.

Thank you for prayerfully considering whether you are able to contribute to this cost.

Within our parish support costs are diocesan support staff salaries for which £2,031,312 is budgeted.
As of June 2026 we have 39 FTE posts of which 14 are grant funded (which accounts for £532.256 of the Diocesan support staff costs.)

Some grants are also included in this section for those who support mission and ministry (£642,519). These include:

• University chaplaincies - £145,354
• Grant to the Diocesan Board of Education - £104,036
• Ordinand maintenance - £104,036
• Deanery administration support - £21,600
• IWC grants - £23,201 (funded by the national church strategic development fund. This grant ends during 2026)
• Resource church grants -  £189,925 (mostly funded by the strategic development fund. This grant ends during 2027)
• Other grants (e.g. Churches Together) - £14,400

The ‘other costs' section accounts for 9% of Diocesan spending and is made up of the amounts that are less than 2% of the spending.
The main components of this are:

• Training - £59,096
  A large part of this is National Church funded and most of this is for clergy training
• Accommodation - £10,800
  The diocese have limited overnight stays for courses and meetings
• Room hire - £17,219
  Almost all meetings are held in SMH, and those which cannot be are limited to essential meetings or those that are grant funded.
• Glebe - £84,000
  Cost of upkeep of the glebe land
• Contractor support - £165,504
  Usually, contractors support projects that receive strategic development funding from the National Church
• Depreciation -  £120,000

Projected stipendiary ministry costs have been calculated by a rolling 5% increase per year. This figure is based on current inflation and any future increases in stipends and pension contributions that the national church may add over the coming years. These are both factors outside of our control, so projected costs will be reviewed regularly and any changes will be communicated to parishes.