THE Church Commissioners have announced further details of the spending of £5 million on disability projects over the next three years, after disagreements last summer over the future of racial-justice funding in the Church of England.
An allocation of £12.4 million for social and racial justice in the 2026-28 triennium was recommended to the Commissioners and the Archbishops’ Council by the Triennium Funding Working Group last year.
The awarded £5 million is part of “its commitment to the participation of Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people in the life of the Church”. Funding will support “leadership training, children and youth work, further training for members of the diocesan disability advisers network, and learning disabilities research”.
Further funding will go towards “small and large grants to make churches more accessible in the Southern Province of the Church of England”, as well as targeted support to the working groups for neurodiversity, children and young people, learning disabilities, and Deaf ministry, to “advance and promote the participation and inclusion of parishioners, churchgoers and clergy with a wide range of disabilities and differences”.
The Bishop of Bedford and Acting Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Revd Richard Atkinson, who chairs the Committee for the Ministry of and amongst Deaf and Disabled People, said: “Working with, and listening to my disabled, neurodivergent and Deaf colleagues, I am increasingly aware of the theological, cultural, and practical barriers to participation and flourishing. There is progress, but there is so much more to do to transform attitudes towards disability in the Church.”
The Archbishops’ Council agreed in December that £7 million would be spent on racial-justice programmes between 2026 and 2029. An additional £200,000 was also to be carried forward from 2023-25 to be spent on racial justice. In response, the Racial Justice Board expressed “deep concern and disquiet” about the Archbishops’ Council’s decision to reduce the funding for racial-justice work from £20 million in 2023-25 to £7 million for 2026-29 (News, 12 December 2025).
In a letter to the Church Times, the board members, who include the co-lead bishops for racial justice, the Bishop of Croydon, Dr Rosemarie Mallett, and the Bishop of Kirkstall, the Rt Revd Arun Arora, described the decision as “lamentable”.
Last June, Dr Mallett and Bishop Arora described the decision to cut social- and racial-justice funding from £26.7 million to £12 million as “bewildering” (News, 13 June 2025). In the General Synod, in York, the following month, the spending plans were defended on the grounds that the £20-million racial-justice funding had been intended as a one-off, not an ongoing commitment (News, 25 July 2025).
The decision was criticised by Daniel Matovu, of Oxford diocese, who suggested that the leadership of the Church “cares little, at least for racial and disability justice”.
“It looks as if racial and disability justice have been asked to share the leftovers at the bottom of the basket,” he said. “We don’t want your words of pity, your lament, your commitments. We are tired of your approval of recommendations and motions without adequate resources to take effective action” (News, 1 August 2025).