ENABLING clergy to buy a home during their time in ministry could be an “investment with a long-term payback”, the chief executive of the Church of England Pensions Board, John Ball, said on Tuesday.

Proposals from the Pensions Board were being “worked up” in response to a consultation last year, Mr Ball said this week, and confirmed that the Board was engaging in the review of stipend levels which is currently in progress.

A reduced reliance on retirement housing, which the Pensions Board currently helps to fund, might in the long term amount to a “cost saving for the Church”, he said.

Decisions on funding levels for 2026-28 will be made by the Church Commissioners and the Archbishops’ Council in the coming months, following recommendations from the Triennium Funding Working Group.

“In a sense, we wait for that to see how this falls, versus other priorities the Church needs to consider. But, even so, we’ve been taking forward the ideas we can, including the later-life home ownership options,” Mr Ball said.

Last year, the Pensions Board surveyd the clergy about their retirement housing needs (News, 5 July 2024). Sixty-nine per cent of respondents thought it unlikely that they would own a property when they retired.

Eighty-seven per cent supported the Board’s proposals, which involve diversifying the types of support available, including assistance with buying a property while still in ministry (News, 15 November 2023).

This month, the Board agreed a £50-million revolving credit facility with NatWest to increase its retirement-housing portfolio (News, 7 February).

The Board’s annual report, published this week, says that 49 new purchases were made for the property portfolio in 2024, and 77 households moved into a church retirement property. The Board had a 9.4-per-cent return on its investments in 2024, which took the fund to £3.4 billion.

This allowed for clergy pensions to be increased by 6.7 per cent last year, exceeding the standard guaranteed increase laid out in the rules of the scheme in order to match inflation, the report says.

New online tools to enable members to check their pensions and calculate their options were used almost 11,000 times in 2024, and further improvements to the website are planned for later this year, the report says.