MY last two contributions in The Month have centred around the Church Attendance returns from parishes for 2010. With about three-quarters of the Parish Finance returns in for 2010, we can now turn to the subject of Parochial Church Council (PCC) expenditure. Even when Parish Share payments, together with expenditure incurred in fundraising and trading and capital expenditure on buildings are excluded, the regular expenditure by a PCC on ministry and mission in its own parish –and perhaps farther afield – is significant.
Generally, this expenditure is found to be dependant on factors such as the size of the congregation and the scale of its activities rather than the socio-economics of the area. Such regular expenditure by PCCs in 2010 totalled £11.9million, equivalent to more than £6 per member per week. Many parishes are likely to have expenditure per member quite close to this amount, but particularly active parishes will have expenditure somewhat more than this and the less active parishes somewhat less. When the Parish Finance Office supports a visit to a parish, it looks closely at this important financial indicator. Between 2008 and 2010 such PCC expenditure appears to have risen by an overall six per cent. The breakdown of this expenditure between the heads used for the data collection process can be summarised in the pie chart pictured below. The expenditure on utilities such as gas, oil, electricity and water may be understated as this item was introduced only recently and some treasurers still include this expenditure under the more general Church Expenses heading.
