Parish Finance

In each parish there is to be a Finance Committee (Canon 537) to help the parish priest in the administration of goods of the parish, without prejudice to canon 532. It is governed by universal law and by norms issued by the Diocesan Bishop, and it is comprised of members of the faithful selected according to these norms.

Thus, Canon Law lays down the basic principles that it is the Parish Priest who is responsible for administering the temporal assets of the parish, that this must be done after taking advice from the Finance Committee (which every parish must have), and that the Bishop sets out the parameters within which that Committee operates. In addition, Canon 369 states that every parish is part of the Diocese in which “the one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ truly exists and functions”.

This means that parishes cannot operate in isolation: every parish has responsibilities to the Diocese, to other parishes, and to clergy. This explains the existence of mutual support through the central banking scheme, through the Diocesan Levy, and through ad-hoc inter-parish arrangements.

What we do:

On a day-to-day basis members of the Parish Finance Committee (PFC) are involved in/ responsible for:

• the counting and banking of the weekly offertory basket collection
• processing Gift Aid donations and making regular claims to HMRC
• processing contactless donations and the associated Gift Aid
• bookkeeping – the entry into the accounts of income and expenditure and regular reconciliation of bank statements
• month-end and year-end reporting, including the Annual Financial Return to the diocese each January
• preparation of an annual “budget” and regular monitoring of actual performance against the agreed budget