A powerful group of trustees is to look for ways to cut staff costs at the Church of Scotland by nearly a third within two years after the Kirk’s General Assembly voted for tougher action to control costs.
A special commission set up to bring about reforms to the church in light of falling attendances and ailing finances had made a series of recommendations to cut costs and review structures.
At the General Assembly Hall in Edinburgh yesterday delegates backed all of these measures, including proposals to cut the number of presbyteries from 43 to 12 and slash staff at the Kirk’s Edinburgh HQ by 20-30 per cent.
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Discussions will also take place on whether the social care charity Crossreach can become more viable and self-sustaining as an arm’s length organisation, albeit still under the umbrella of the Church.
In the context of congregations having halved since 2000 and predicted to fall further, the Kirk’s income flatlining and a growing deficit of £4.46m last year, delegates showed little of the resistance to change which has marked previous years.
The commission’s report warned that the Church of Scotland has found itself increasingly hanmpered by structures intended to maintain and regulate a much larger organisation. “Our situation has now become critical in terms of finance, numbers, and the evident dysfunctionalities of our organisation,” it concluded.
Introducing the report, Professor David Fergusson, convener of the special commission on structural reform, said its members’ findings had been received as hard hitting and sometimes shocking. “It has also been said that its focus is fiscal rather than visionary and that it is severe in its stress on cost-cutting measures,” he said. “we disagree with these criticisms.”
In fact as the commission’s series of ‘deliverances’ were voted through some urged faster action and tougher targets for the speed at which saving should be achieved.
Professor Fergusson welcomed the decision of the assembly to create the new body of trustees to oversee reforms, which is to have greater powers and will be less compromised than the previous Council of Assembly, which was compromised by divided loyalties and vested interests. He said he expected the new body to be up and running by the beginning of June and to move quickly to appoint a chief officer.
He said the reforms would help bring the Kirk’s finances under control, while returning more control to local regions and parishes.
But while some efficiencies can be made, jobs will need to go at the Kirk’s headquarters in Edinburgh’s George Street: Staff have been taken on in recent years to such an extent that the workforce is now the same as it was 20 years ago - when it was sustained by congregations twice as large.
“I can’t hide the fact that there will have to be some reductions in the staffing levels” Professor Fergusson said. “The church has a responsibility to exercise proper stewardship of the money raised by congregations.”
Despite the difficult messages in his report, Prof Fergusson said the assembly had been in a “positive mood”. Previous attempts at reform have fizzled out.
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“There was a sense that people had been waiting for these changes for some time,” he said. “one former moderator said he had been waiting 50 years for this report.”
He said he wouldn’t describe the changes backed by the assembly as ‘future-proofing’ the Church and couldn’t guarantee that they would do so. But he added: “Doing nothing was not an option for us. We had to make significant changes.”
He said other changes would still be needed, particularly at local level, including moves to plant new congregations and consider what to do with some of the Church’s buildings. Some of these issues will be considered at Tuesday’s session as part of a “Radical Action Plan” produced by the Council of Assembly.
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