The Money bit - The Common fund

There is a system or “formula” for deciding  exactly  how  much  each  parish  should contribute to the Common Fund, which tries to differentiate between large wealthy  parishes and smaller less well endowed areas. 

To begin with there is a fixed amount that all parishes pay.  For 2008 this amount is £7,500 for each paid clergy in the parish.

The “formula” has three elements, the first two elements are used to calculate a ‘notional membership’ of the deanery or parish, relative to the whole diocese:

a.        The five year average of the number on the Electoral Roll.  (E.R.)

20%  of the E.R. is put into the formula.

b.        The average Sunday attendance over five years. (A.S.A.)

 80% of the A.S.A. goes into the formula.

As the figure for All Souls parish is still uncertain, the following calculation is for Polesworth deanery:

E.R. = (725 x 20%)  +  A.S.A. =( 645 x 80%)  = 661 =  notional membership of Polesworth Deanery.

The notional membership of the deanery is divided by notional membership of whole diocese:

661 / 14641 = .04515

c.        The third part of the ‘formula’ is the deanery factor  (or parish factor when calculating individual parishes)  The ‘factor’ is average income compared with average income of whole diocese which is based upon the survey of incomes made by churchwardens each year.  The factor for the whole diocese is taken as 1.0.  Polesworth Deanery factor is 0.86.

The figure above is multiplied by the ‘factor’:       .04515 x 0.86 = .03883

This is multiplied by total amount required:         .03883 x £4,018,000 = £159,533

To this is added the fixed amount of £7,500  for each priest.  7 in Polesworth Deanery = 52,500

£159,533 + £52,500 = £212,033 = total required to be raised from Polesworth Deanery in 2008.

The same approach is taken to calculate the Common Fund allocation for each parish but multiplying the parish fraction by total required in the deanery rather than diocese!