The Church of England Pensions Board has today published the outcome of its review of rental housing for retired clergy, following a consultation process which took place last year.   The publication summarising the consultation results and the Pensions Board’s decisions is available here.

Dr Jonathan Spencer, Chairman of the Church of England Pensions Board, said:
“The Board is committed to assisting those clergy who need our help with retirement housing, now and in the future.  The majority of those who seek our help come into our rental scheme.  Many of them find the way it currently operates difficult and stressful.  We also need to be good stewards of the funds we are given to do this important work.  So, last year, we put forward, and consulted on, a new approach to retirement housing.

I am very grateful to the many people who responded.  The overall response was very positive. Respondents agreed that the new approach will provide the best service to current and future generations of retiring clergy at a cost which is affordable for the wider Church.  We have also responded to concern over the position of current tenants who might suffer a significant fall of income in the future.

The main changes to the rental scheme are: that clergy will be able to start looking for a retirement property much earlier; they will be able to choose their future home from a large pool of high quality properties in the certain knowledge of what the costs of each property will be, and they will pay a subsidised rent based on the value of the property they choose.   None of these changes will take place before 1 April 2015.

There will be a limited impact on current tenants, who will see only a very gradual change (increase or decrease) in their rent from April 2015.  Pensions Board housing staff will be in touch with every tenant about what this will mean for them personally.”

The scheme that has been reviewed is the Church’s Housing Assistance for Retired Ministry (CHARM) rental scheme.  The changes do not affect the CHARM shared equity or mortgage schemes, or the supported living or nursing home schemes, also provided by the Pensions Board.

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