DOES the Church of England have a moral duty to improve its care for the retired clergy? Despite a recent rise in the clergy pension, which was increased by 10.1 per cent in April 2023, some of the retired clergy are struggling to pay bills and are having to shop very carefully, while others have found that rent rises or benefit reductions have left them no better off. Some say that recent reports of the Church Commissioners’ spending millions on new schemes has made them feel that their struggles are being overlooked.
The Rt Revd Colin Fletcher, a former Bishop of Dorchester, who chairs the Retired Clergy Association, says: “Everybody is still concerned about the cost of living, particularly energy prices — and food prices are still higher than they were a year ago. There are still going to be challenges: there is no question at all.”
Bishop Fletcher is concerned about the way in which clergy are having to seek charitable support just to pay their bills: “We have a moral duty that we seek to fulfil, to care for clergy, and I think we could do better.”
The Pensions Board offers charitable-support services to its members and residents “as needs and circumstances change in retirement”. Although the Board has encouraged clergy to let them know if they are struggling, Bishop Fletcher says, many do not want to ask for help.
The Board’s chief executive, John Ball, says that it runs its own charitable grant scheme to top up income for those in particular need, which is assessed on their annual income. The Board also offers the retired clergy help with gaining access to benefits and other sources of money.
The main charity that the clergy can draw on is the Clergy Support Trust. In the past few months, requests for help have risen in a way that is unprecedented, the Trust says. In 2022, it made almost 300 grants, totalling £257,000, to retired clergy alone. More than half these grants were for financial support and emergencies. Last year’s grant numbers are set to be matched or increased in 2023 if requests continue at the same level.
The Trust’s chief executive, the Revd Ben Cahill-Nicholls, says: “Those extraordinary clergy who have given so much to our Church and our communities surely deserve a retirement as free as possible of financial-, mental-, and physical-health challenge. Sadly, this is not the case for an increasing number of retired clergy.
“The cost-of-living crisis means that more retired clergy households are finding themselves in need, and coming to the Clergy Support Trust for such essentials as paying their gas bills, buying clothing, and travelling to visit family at Christmas.
“The Trust does what it can, and we are privileged to support more retired clergy each year, including through our new visiting-caseworker service, which offers more in-depth help. However, we cannot be the whole solution: the NCIs and others need to continue working to ensure happy and comfortable retirements for our amazing sisters and brothers in ministry.”
HOUSING for the retired clergy appears to be one of the main issues causing hardship. Although circumstances vary, the Pensions Board reports that about one sixth of the clergy do not have their own housing in place when they retire and come to the Board for help.
Bishop Fletcher says: “We need to look at funding for clergy housing. The number of clergy needing housing has gone up, because of the sheer numbers of clergy retiring. More houses need to be bought.”
The Pensions Board currently supports 1800 households, equating to 2700 residents in total. The rental scheme offers retired clergy without the means to buy their own property the opportunity to rent one from the Board.
Last year, 83 new households moved into its accommodation, which includes rental and community-living schemes. A spokesperson for the Board says: “Demand from new retirees for help with retirement housing is at almost unprecedented levels for 2023 and the following years, driven by an increase in retirements, and the knock-on impacts of the pandemic, which saw some clergy delay retirements or bring them forward.”
The Board received additional funding from the Archbishops’ Council to assist with the higher demand and higher costs, but its chief executive says that it may need more support.
TENANTS of properties in the Church’s Housing Assistance for the Retired Ministry (CHARM) scheme were hit by a 10.1-per-cent rent rise in April — a rise lower than inflation but higher than the seven-per-cent cap placed on rent rises in the social-housing sector.
The membership secretary of CHARMERS, an independent fellowship of residents in CHARM houses and Supported Housing, the Revd David Phypers, says that the pension increase has been taken away by the rise in housing rent. The increase in rent amounts to a “real-terms cut in the value of pensions for a significant number of retired clergy and their widowed spouses”.
“The Clergy Support Trust is very generous,” he says, “but should they be subsidising the clergy pension? Are they bailing the Pensions Board out, by giving charity to clergy when the pension should be increased?”
Mr Phypers has been directly affected by the rise: his fuel bill has trebled. His 80-year-old wife continues to work part-time, to try and make ends meet. He said that the rent charged for their CHARM home had always been “far more than we thought it would be, when we believe we responded to the call of God on our lives”.
THE retired clergy who have been among the hardest-hit in the current climate, Bishop Fletcher says, are those who have retired early on health grounds. The Revd Eva McIntyre was ordained priest in 1997, having been in ministry since 1984. She has worked in a variety of sector ministries, in the Prison Service, on radio, and with charities, as well as, for many years, in parish ministry. In 2017, aged 56, she took early retirement on health grounds, and is currently based in the diocese of Worcester.
She says: “Because I retired so young, and because they made the state pension so late, I only have my church pension and the state benefits that I’m entitled to. This year, when the Pensions Board decided to give a nice 10.1-per-cent rise to the pension, my benefits have actually gone down slightly — because every time you get an increase in your pension . . . they adjust your benefits.
“I’m not feeling the benefit of the pension rise. My housing benefit will also come down. For those who retired and owned their own properties, the pension rise is great. But for those of us in Pensions Board housing, our rents also went up by a significant amount.”
“I came out [of ministry] homeless, and I have been housed with a secure tenancy, which is worth its weight in gold, and the fact that I am not paying a market rate is gratefully received. But it is not what I expected when I first talked to people five or ten years before I had to take early retirement. They told us: ‘Don’t worry: we’ll look after you when you retire.’
“I’m now 62, and here I am, having given decades of my life to the Church in one form or another, feeling: ‘This is all I’m worth.’ I rely on the Clergy Support Trust. If it hadn’t been for them, I would have been in quite a predicament.”
According to Ms McIntyre, the housing team has an unprecedented number of people to house — far higher than expected. “This means, if people already in CHARM housing need to move, for whatever reason, they are struggling to rehouse them, because the waiting list is very long.”
Ms McIntyre, who chairs CHARMERS, believes that the Pensions Board is giving with one hand and taking away with the other, and that the housing scheme is underfunded. Each year, the General Synod approves a grant to the scheme. She says: “What they are doing, effectively, is they are investing in property, and we are paying the debt.”
UNTIL 2010, funding of the Pensions Board’s retirement housing had been loaned from the Church Commissioners. When that arrangement changed, the Board had to borrow the funds on commercial terms from other lenders to buy properties.
Mr Ball says that, with rising inflation and interest rates, the cost of debt servicing is now equivalent to four-fifths of the income that the Board receives in rents. This situation, he says, requires careful financial management.
Ms McIntyre says that she would like to see the Commissioners put more funds into the housing scheme: “It is about telling clergy they are valued.”
She continues: “Looking after the health and well-being of clergy before they retire is vital, and also looking after the health and well-being of retired clergy, and having a rent scheme for those of us in Pension Board housing that in some way acknowledges our income.”
Mr Ball says that the Board has moved away from a capital- and income-based rent, and, after a consultation, it has adopted target rents for its housing, with the aim of greater fairness for tenants in different circumstances. But he acknowledges that for some this has become difficult, even though target rents are typically discounted at about 60 per cent of the market cost.
He says: “What we are trying to do with anyone who is struggling is have one-to-one conversations. We’re aware of the benefits-trap issue. The benefits cap is a particular concern for anyone under state pension age. This is a particularly complex area, and the board has a specialist welfare-benefits adviser who can support individuals to review their own situation. We try to help people receive all the benefits they are entitled to.”
Ms McIntyre would like to see more done. “It’s about who is responsible for pastoral care, because the Pensions Boards thinks it’s dioceses, but the dioceses are not housing them. If the Church Commissioners were serious about caring for retired clergy, they would have considered these things; instead, they set up a housing association.”
THE Revd David Perrett retired in 2013 after 33 years of ministry. He lives in a house that he rents from the Pensions Board in the diocese of Peterborough. “I’m a widower, living on my own for the first time in my life. At the moment, it’s the energy bills that are the difficulty — they keep going up and up and up,” he says.
“I’m having to be very careful indeed. I certainly can’t have a holiday, and I have to eat carefully. There is no wriggle room. . . Although the pensions went up, so did the rents; so what was the point? They give with one hand and take away with the other; so we’re no better off.”
Mr Perrett says that he feels let down by the Pensions Board, which, he says, has failed in its duty of care, delaying vital alterations for his house necessitated by his wife’s illness. His wife, Dorothy, was diagnosed with dementia in 2018.
He is very unhappy that the alteration work did not start until he offered to pay for it, and, by the time it was finally completed, after multiple hold-ups, his wife had moved into a care home and then died before the work was finished.
Mr Perrett, a former rural dean, says: “The Church of England has to learn to be accountable and to say sorry, and doing it looking into our eyes.”
Now living alone, he would love to be closer to his children in Nottingham; but he says that the Pensions Board is not making it easy for him to move, partly owing to a shortage in properties.
Calls have been made for the Synod to increase the pension fund, which is voted on each year. One member of the Archbishops’ Council, the Revd Dr Ian Paul, has a private member’s motion that will ask the Synod to call on the Archbishops’ Council, the Pensions Board, and the Church Commissioners to use their assets and resources to restore the clergy pension to its pre-2011 benefit level, as soon as possible.
Dr Paul says: “In 2015, the clergy pension was unilaterally reduced by a third, by what I regard as a sleight of hand. Questions in Synod have confirmed that this would cost a mere £25 million per annum to rectify. This must surely be put right, and better provision made for housing the clergy in retirement who were not able to buy their own property during ministry.”
Bishop Fletcher says that he has been shocked to hear how some clergy, now living in rented housing that they are struggling to afford, feel let down by the Church. “Some of those I feel saddest for are those clergy who did own a house and, up until the 1990s, they were encouraged to sell their houses to pay for their training. They were told by the Church, ‘We’ll look after you.’
“I’m not sure the people who made the promises had the wherewithal to do anything. Some of those clergy feel extremely hard done by now. When promises have been made, there is a moral duty to try and fulfil them in some way or other.”
THE Revd Nick Jones retired early in November 2021, owing to health issues. He did not own his own house, and is living in accommodation rented from the Pension Board. After spending 30 years in ministry, at what he describes as the “sharp end”, in urban contexts and the prison system, he feels abandoned by the Church of England.
As he is not yet entitled to his state pension, he has a very modest Church of England pension, which is supplemented by his wife’s income from a job. He sa: “My pension barely covers the rent; so we have to live off my wife’s income. We have been really squeezed, and our rent has gone up. I have managed to get a low-paid job, which I can manage with my health condition; without that, we would really struggle.
“The stipend for clergy is quite low, and my whole clergy career we’ve been dependent on my wife’s salary to supplement our income.” He is worried about what the future holds and whether his wife will be able to retire.
Mr Jones says he would like to see the Church of England put more funding into housing for the retired clergy, as he doesn’t believe that it will be fit for future generations.
“I think the knock-on effect is that there is going to be more demand on our scheme, and the scheme is being depleted. It’s not just about my case, but about colleagues who will be retiring in the future without a house, maybe a decade or so ahead.
“The Church has got money when it wants to have it. There are myself and other retired clergy in quite difficult situations. At the same time, we’re hearing that the Church is spending millions on new projects, opening new churches — which I don’t object to, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like those of us who’ve served the Church for decades are being properly looked after.”
He says that there is a lack of support for the retired clergy. “I’ve worked in Ely, and what was Bradford diocese, now Leeds; and I worked for five years in the Prison Service. Basically, I’ve worked a lot of the time at the sharp end, busting a gut for the Church of England, and now I’m feeling a bit left on one side.
“I think my ask would be, can the bishops, the Archbishops’ Council and General Synod have a look into what the situation now is for retired clergy, because there are a lot of people in a worse situation than me, and it’s not great for me.”
THE chair of the Church of England Pensions Board, Clive Mather, says: “Inflation is a pernicious attack on living standards. My fellow trustees and I are acutely conscious of the pressures this means for households. In this context, we were pleased to be able make a discretionary increase to clergy pensions from April this year. The CPI-matching increase was more than double the guaranteed increases in the Scheme, and made possible by strong and sustained investment performance.
“Questions of how much should clergy be paid, or what funds made available to support housing in retirement, are properly for the Archbishops’ Council and Synod. Our role is to administer the pension schemes within the rules and provide housing services within the funding envelope available, and we seek to do so with dedication, professionalism, and compassion.
“The Board’s housing and pensions teams continue to offer individual one-to-one support to residents, scheme members, and beneficiaries who contact us. One size rarely fits all, and so I encourage those who are worried to get in touch with our teams for an individual conversation.”