Question

To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, with reference to the announcements of the cities of Leicester, Lincoln and Liverpool on plans to implement large parish structures in February 2022, what arrangements will be put in place to compensate for the loss in local pastoral care.

Local strategies are for individual dioceses to work out, not the Church Commissioners.

In each of these cases, the change in structures are to enable effective ministry, including pastoral care, to be present in communities given the challenges in the overall numbers of clergy and the financial challenge facing the Church, especially post-Covid. In each of the cases there is an anticipation of better pastoral care than under the status quo.