Wasted Money in a Diminishing Church: A Comment

Robin Gill and John Craven of The Centre for Anglican History and Theology at the Universities of Kent and Christ Church Canterbury have published this report:

Wasted Money in a Diminishing Church: A Report on the Church of England

I think one of the key statements is this:

"In the 21st century dioceses in the Church of England almost doubled their number of administrators (including some 220 on safeguarding alone), while the number of parish clergy almost halved, and churchgoing continued to decline."

But the same trend can be seen in the public sector, with the growth of administrative roles compared to front-line staff:

Economists and public policy experts point to several systemic drivers that mimic the trends seen in the Church of England. 

(1) Modern governments face immense regulatory, legal, and risk-management pressures. Just as the Church added roughly 220 roles dedicated strictly to safeguarding, public sector agencies must continuously hire staff for compliance, equity, audit, health and safety, and data protection (e.g., GDPR)

(2) In what researchers call the “New Public Bureaucracy,” internal organizational changes frequently concentrate new hiring in advisory, policymaking, and accountability-facing functions. Frontline workers (like teachers, nurses, or police officers) are increasingly managed by expanding layers of coordinators and corporate planners

How can this be changed?

Church governing bodies (such as the Church of England’s General Synod) can pass legislation that legally caps the percentage of church income that can be spent on central diocesan staff, human resources, and non-parochial officers. By enforcing an institutional “frontline-first” spending ratio, money is legally protected for local rectories, curates, and neighborhood outreach programs.

Advocacy groups like Save the Parish point out that the Church of England effectively replicates its legal, financial, HR, and safeguarding structures 42 times over—once for each individual diocese. This duplication creates a massive administrative overhead, costing an aggregate of over £150 million annually across the dioceses.

Instead of 42 separate HR payroll systems, 42 IT infrastructures, and 42 distinct legal teams, the Church could operate 4 or 5 regional administrative hubs. The savings could be instantly redirected toward funding frontline parish priests.