St. John’s Community Church, Chase Terrace 2021 Accounts Summary Prepared by J. Haywood - Treasurer
At time of writing (2[nd] Apr 2022) the church accounts have been passed to the Lichfield Diocese for independent examination but we haven’t yet had confirmation of acceptance. That means that the accounts, although finalized haven’t been independently ratified.
Income
St. John’s income in 2021 was £112k. Overall, our income was slightly higher than 2020, but still below a “normal” year of about £120k. The difference between 2021 and a “normal” year is that we had reduced room hire due to covid, less church groups meeting or only meeting for part of a year, less services and weddings as well as no seasonal activities such as the popular Christmas Fayre.
Income Breakdown
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We can break the £112k income, broadly into 6 groups. The biggest being planned giving. Planned giving is what we call regular giving mostly given through standing order. This has grown by about £2k year on year which is fantastic news.
We can also reclaim the tax for those who are able to gift aid - that’s the orange section on the chart. The Tax reclaim and Planned Giving makes up three quarters of our income and because it is regular, it allows us to plan more easily around our expenditure.
There is a large section shown as “other income”. That’s a mix of donations, bank interest and fees from things like weddings.
Grants for St. John’s were lower than a normal year, but most grant and funding providers switched to giving grants to organisations directly supporting with covid relief. We had a couple of small grants to pay for children’s activity packs during lockdown over Christmas and Easter, aswell as a small grant that paid for half of the drinks fridge.
We also applied for Covid relief grants in partnership with Burntwood Be A Friend (BBAF). This essentially meant the grant money came into St. John’s accounts but were then paid out to BBAF, as part of their Covid relief work in 2021. The total of this amount was £7k and doesn’t show in the chart, but I can confirm that this has completely left the church accounts and is fully audited.
Expenditure
From the table above, you can see that, during Covid in 2020 and as Covid continued in 2021, we were able to reduce our spend from around £125k to £112k. That was mainly through furloughing staff and lowering running costs (everything from printer ink to tuck shop sweets for YPC).
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Expenditure Breakdown
Parish Share / Common Fund: As a church we pay into what’s now called the Common Fund – previously known as the Parish Share. In 2021 we paid about £55k into this pot, roughly half our expenditure and nearly half our income. In return, this pot pays for Matt & Ruth’s wages, housing and pensions, as well as the training of future curates. It helps to fund the work of various central departments in the Diocese, such as the admin, finance and safeguarding teams, and supports the work of the General Synod, which is the main decisionmaking body for the Church of England.
The amount the diocese asks churches to pay into the Common Fund is largely dependent on two factors. Firstly, churches in more affluent areas generally pay more into the Common Fund than those in more deprived areas, which is a good way of ensuring all areas can have a local church presence, regardless of their circumstances. Secondly, churches with full time clergy like St. John’s will pay more than those with part-time clergy, like Hammerwich or Christ Church.
Although the Common Fund system isn’t perfect, it’s generally a pretty fair way of ensuring the provision of clergy for churches and funding for the Church of England’s ministry and mission is distributed in every area of the country.
Staff Wages: We had 4 members of staff in 2021. Our Parish Administrator, Children’s Worker and 2 cleaners. We were able to furlough for part of the year, which meant we were able to claim £3k back from the government through the furlough scheme.
Running Costs: This is a catch all pot. To give a flavour of what is in here: Computer software and music licenses costing nearly £1.5k, £800 on photocopier ink and paper, £200 on cleaning materials, £550 on tea/coffee/biscuits/fizzy pop, depreciation on our assets, Little Friends, FnF and our Sunday groups costs of resources and food (we feed our FnF groups each week), community support etc...
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Tithe: St. John’s gives away 10% of our previous year’s income (excluding grants). This is mainly through regular charitable giving, ensuring charities can plan their income accordingly. As a PCC, we have always tried to give to charities working locally, nationally and internationally.
In 2021, we continued to support Light for Children – a charity supporting young people and families in need in Romania, it’s a charity that has deep roots at St. John’s and we have supported it since it’s inception, Pathway Project – Ruth spoke briefly about Pathway last week, but in case you missed it, they are a domestic and sexual abuse service supporting anyone in need based in Lichfield & Tamworth, UCB radio, the Food Bank and the YouthNet which is a Christian-based, children and youth charity working in and out of schools and organisations in and around Stafford.
These charities received in total £5.5k across the year. The PCC also gave a £1k donation to BBAF. This means we have some unallocated tithe still to give away, this is normal and this will be an agenda item for the next PCC meeting.
We also have £5k from previous tithe years allocated to the Friends of Chase Terrace Park. We’re hopeful that post-Covid, they will be able to regroup and reinvigorate their ideas for the park that’s just behind us.
Repairs: There was no single, major expense, but a long list of small items adds up. Items like: fire alarm/extinguisher servicing, boiler servicing, leaking radiators, upkeep of St. John’s churchyard, brown bin stickers and other small items.
We did buy the drinks fridge for £625 to improve our hospitality of which half was covered by the grant, we also bought a new mower. We spruced up the curates house with a lick of paint and new carpets, most of which was covered through a central diocesan fund.
Account Summary
Our income in the year was almost exactly the same as our expenditure of £112k, which actually meant we had a £7 surplus on the year.
That’s a really positive place to be, given the continued uncertainty of covid, and in comparison to the previous 3 years where we spent more than our income.
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Account Summary
The account summary shows our savings and assets in 2 pots, Fixed Assets and Net Assets.
In simple terms, fixed assets are “things” buildings and contents.
We don’t own the St. John’s building, it’s owned by the diocese, so our only fixed assets are the contents within the building. Chairs, sound equipment and other items that we could sell if we needed to raise some cash.
And then there are our Net Assets. We sold our church building on Ironstone Rd in 2018. That money, roughly £109k, is sat in a church trust fund administered by the diocese which makes up most of our Net Assets. The remaining net assets – roughly £40k – is the churches bank and savings account. £40k is broadly where we are trying to keep our savings levels, ensuring that if income drops, we can continue to operate for a short period of time and continue to pay things like our staff wages etc…
2021 Review
All in all, 2021 was a positive year. A year in which our income stayed strong thanks to the communities faithful and continued giving, as well as the support provided to the many groups that use the church through the week.
It was also a year where we were able to make some savings to balance the books.
That allowed us to continue to pay our staff and common fund, invest in the churches look and feel, tithe widely to our chosen charities, support local people and groups through the church, and raise and distribute £7k of grants through Burntwood Be A Friend.
Looking Ahead
There are 6 main topics that are on my mind for 2022 and into 2023 in terms of the churches finance, these are:
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Agreeing our outstanding tithe.
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Our children’s provision. What we may wish to do in the future and what that might mean for our accounts.
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Our quinquennial, which is our 5 year buildings inspection from the diocese. This is due this year and may or may not throw up some surprises for maintenance at extra cost!
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The church windows. It was raised at our last quinquennial but has been stuck amongst a lot of paperwork as we and the diocese resolved the specifications needed for replacements. But in short, the inspection
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advised that we needed to replace all the external doors and windows. This will (hopefully) be completed this year at a cost of around £35k.
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There will inevitably be further maintenance costs. We’ve got some ongoing boiler problems, but will also need to repaint and potentially touch up our plastering following the windows replacements.
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And finally, the common fund payment has actually held flat for 2 years. Given the rise in inflation, this has meant real term cutbacks for the Church of England and the Diocese, but some of their costs, things like wages and pensions, need to stay somewhere close to providing a living wage. S,o we are expecting a pretty significant increase in this cost next year.
If you have any further questions about the church finances, do feel free to speak to me or Matt.
And finally, I’d just like to say thank you again, to all those that give to the running of St. John’s, be that financially, physically or spiritually.
But an extra special thanks must go to the Finance team, without which the churches finances would be an absolute mess! Marie who manages and administers our money, payments and records; Lisa who actually completes our accounts keeping us all in check; and to Sue our gift aid secretary, a role she is relinquishing this year.
Thank you.
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