THE General Synod has called on the Archbishops’ Council to commission a review of “what is required to ensure [that] clergy are not merely provided with the bare minimum to live on, but supported in retirement with dignity and fairness”.
The request was part of a private member’s motion from Canon James Blandford-Baker (Ely) on the Saturday afternoon, which, he said, belonged to “a vast cloud of witnesses to injustice and in many cases poverty among retired clergy”.
Two thousand clergy had joined the Clergy Action Facebook Group, 700 had signed a letter to the Church Times, and 192 members had signed the motion, he said. He welcomed the proposals to improve pensions set out in the national spending plans, including restoring the pension to two-thirds of the stipend. But there was a need for an independent review to ensure that “we never end up in this place again.”
There were “deep structural questions to face”, he said. In one of his parishes, the best preacher was a clergy pensioner in his nineties. Canon Blandford-Baker was critical of the fact that pension calculations currently factored in the state pension, whose future was uncertain.
The review should also take into account the years spent in training and the breaks taken by some during their ministry. Most clergy were unable to invest in property. Unlike the stipend, the pension did not account for housing need.
Some clergy were paying the entire sum of their pension back to the Church through the clergy-housing retirement scheme (CHARM), he said. Some were unable to live near to children, grandchildren, or friends, or were “lost on some soulless new estate disconnected from public transport and unable to access vital public services”.
Canon Blandford-Baker called for a pension “that provides dignity, not poverty”, and suggested that the current decline in ordinand numbers could be the “direct result” of the current “poor provision”.
The Revd Graham Kirk-Spriggs (Norwich) told the Synod: “There is no way I am ever going to afford a house. . . There is presumption in [the] pension scheme that you have a lovely middle-class partner able to support you in retirement. What about those clergy that don’t have that support network?”
Ian Boothroyd (Southwell & Nottingham) challenged the idea that the pension was generous. It was not a final-salary scheme, and the pensionable stipend was the national minimum stipend, not the stipend that most clergy were being paid. He highlighted those clergy who had retired after 2021, during a period of high inflation when the stipend was not lifted.
The Ven. Dr Adrian Youings (Bath & Wells) moved an amendment to thank the NCIs for their work on a “significant and immediate step towards correcting an historic injustice”. It called on the Church of England Pensions Board “specifically to provide some form of restitution for those already in receipt of a pension with post-2011 service”, and called for the comprehensive review.
Dr Youings described how, “day after day, clergy and their families have shared stories of pain, worry, and uncertainty around pensions and housing.” One cleric had said that his mother, a clergy widow, had a higher pension than that forecast for him. One quarter of all Sunday services were taken by retired clergy, Dr Youings said. Many serving clergy had never looked at their pensions, and so had “no idea what was coming down the line”.
Canon Simon Talbott (Ely) drew attention to the clergy who had served in another Church before the Church of England — a prior ministry not accounted for by the Pensions Board, he said.
The Revd Lis Goddard (London) was concerned about the inequity experienced by those who had a portfolio ministry, and for women who might take house-for-duty posts as a way of serving part-time while caring for young children, and lacked access to the pension scheme. She had been told that it was “impossible for someone to pay into scheme. But other professional bodies manage it. . . These are people who keep our churches running.”
The Chair of the Church of England Pensions Board, Clive Mather, supporting the amendment, offered reassurances that a plan would be implemented to help those who had served the Church after 2011, and those who had retired since 2021. He said, however, that retrospective work was “very, very difficult”, as there was a “mind-bending” set of individual calculations to be made. He thanked God for what had been made possible, but warned that “the further you go, the more you . . . risk increasing contributions, which is the one thing we seek to avoid.”
Nadine Daniel (Liverpool) had been part of a “counter-cultural liberal Catholic church-plant” — St Margaret of Antioch, in Toxteth — since 2013. It had put forward eight ordinands, and the electoral roll had increased from four to 62. All this had been supported and enabled by retired clergy, she said, including the Revd Sister Norma Nelson CA, now in her nineties.
The Revd Dr Ian Paul (Southwell & Nottingham), who moved the original private members’ motion that had preceded the commitment to improving clergy pensions, spoke of “persistence over many years” and thanked colleagues in the NCIs. The Pensions Board’s chief executive, John Ball, had “taken the time and trouble” to read every single story from the Clergy Pension Action Group. One person had written: “I no longer fear retirement.”
Dr Ian Johnston (Portsmouth) said that the National Institutions Measure of the 1990s had “failed us in our oversight”. While he supported the new governance Measure, there was “more to do”, including changing Standing Orders to ensure that “we do not get into this situation again.” He lamented a “low interest in governance”. What was needed was as methodical approach.
The Chair of the Finance Committee, Carl Hughes (Southwark), was “delighted to be able to announce material changes that are affordable”.
The amendment was clearly carried. The amended motion was then carried 328-0 with three recorded abstentions. It read:
That this Synod:
a) Note the unanimous support given by this Synod in February 2024 to the Private Member’s Motion brought by the Revd Dr Ian Paul, calling for improvements in the level of clergy pensions;
b) Thank the Pensions Board and the Archbishops’ Council for the proposals being brought before this Synod in GS 2402 Annex C, and endorse these proposals wholeheartedly as a significant and immediate step towards correcting an historic injustice;
c) Note with gratitude the significantly improved funding position of the Church of England Funded Pension Scheme (CEFPS) which means that these changes can be made without requiring funding from elsewhere in the Church ecosystem;
d) Call on the Pensions Board to go further than the current proposals — specifically to provide some form of restitution for those already in receipt of a pension with post 2011 service as described in Paragraph 18 on Page 30 of GS 2402 Annex C;
e) Call on the Archbishops’ Council to commission a comprehensive, independent review of what is needed to ensure that clergy and their dependents are supported in retirement with dignity and fairness — specifically in relation to both pension provision and housing. The review should be chaired by an independent lay person with a working group representing all relevant interests, and engaging fully with clergy, clergy spouses, retired clergy and other stakeholders (including the Clergy Pension Action Group and the Retired Clergy Association). The review should initially report back to Synod within 12 months.
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