THE Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) hopes that a fees survey, to be launched this month, will yield a broad picture of what churches are paying musicians.

The RSCM has always provided guidance on church musicians’ fees, and continues to receive requests for advice, but, in the absence of any significant recent survey, acknowledges that its data are now historical rather than current.

“It’s a good opportunity to reassess the data and find out exactly what’s happening,” the RSCM’s deputy director, Dr Paul Hedley, said on Monday. “We don’t want this to be an echo chamber whereby all of our members tell us what they’re paying, but to run a much wider survey across the Church and church music as a whole.

“We know it’s a very diverse picture. Lots of church musicians give of their expertise and time as part of their regular giving to their local church, and many professional musicians give either voluntarily or take much reduced remuneration. For others, the music that they make in churches is their primary income.”

Existing data revealed geographical variation as well as differences in practice between rural, town, and city churches, Dr Hedley said. The designation “church musician” now encompassed not only organists, choirmasters, and choristers, but, also worship and band leaders, professional and amateur singers, those who ran children’s choirs, and those operating PA systems and sound desks, he said.

“Again, there are volunteers in churches who will sit on the sound desk for the services, but there are also those with much more expertise who manage that side of things. There are clearly many different contexts now, even from five and ten years ago.

“We want to play back the picture we get from the survey into the wider conversation. Sometimes, PCCs set remuneration levels in conversation with an individual musician, and our members are asking questions like ’What ballpark should I be in?’ ‘What conversations ought I to be having that puts things into a sensible context?’”

It had been challenging to come up with a survey with as few barriers to completion as possible, he said, but the aim had been to ensure that individuals or organisations saw only the questions that were relevant to them, and that there was scope for others, such as incumbents, PCCs, or treasurers, also to have useful input.

The survey is entirely anonymised, beyond reference to the part of the country and the context of the worship, “so that those undertaking it can feel as free as possible in their response”, Dr Hedley reiterated.

The RCSM hopes for the widest possible response.