Parish share allocation 2025
One of the things that binds our diocese together is the shared commitment to fund our ministry for God’s mission across this area. Each parish volunteers to pay a certain amount into the central diocesan budget, to be used to help fund mission and ministry. Find out more about parish share on our Parish Share Explained page. We’ve also included on that page answers to some of the more common questions we receive about parish share. The video (above) explains the concept, albeit the figures are a little out of date.
In November 2024, our Diocesan Synod agreed with the recommendations of our Parish Share Review Group about a new way to calculate parish share payments for each parish. You can read their report here.
Synod members agreed that calculations around parish share allocation from 2025 should be still based on a measure of Average Weekly Attendance, but calculated over a three, four and then five-year rolling average, to ensure all figures are post-Covid ones. It should also be based on relative affluence, based on the average net disposable income for each parish. All of these figures for 2025 have been checked with Archdeacons and in some cases, individual parishes.
Our synod also agreed there should be some transitional arrangements to smooth over the effects of large changes, upwards or downwards, in the amount of parish share requested from each parish from 2025 onwards. Any increases or reductions have been capped at five per cent for this year. And any parish that found its parish share unaffordable was invited to have constructive dialogue with the Diocesan Secretary.
Each parish has now received a letter outlining the amount it is being asked for in parish share, as well as the precise calculation that has resulted in that figure (an a comparison with the average for parishes across the diocese). And all conversations about those allocations – between our Diocesan Secretary and individual parishes – have now been concluded.
We made a promise that the amount requested from each of our parishes in parish share would be displayed on our website once that process was over. You can now see the full figures here:
Sample calculation
Here is an example of how the calculation was arrived at for a sample parish:
A: Three-year Average Weekly Attendance = 76.83 people
B: Experian Score (measuring net disposable income, across a range between 0.5 as the lowest and 1.5 as the highest) = 0.567
A multiplied by B = Parish Weighted AWA = 43.58
This Parish Weighted AWA (43.58) = 1.04% of the Total Diocesan AWA (4,201)
Therefore 1.04% of the total amount to be raised in parish share across the diocese (£5,379,470) =
A parish share allocation for this parish of £55,815 for 2025
[This may have been further adjusted if the increase or decrease since 2024 is more than five per cent, or in dialogue with the Diocesan Secretary]
