Church Commissioners written question – answered at on 1 September 2025.
Andrew Rosindell
Shadow Parliamentary Under Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs)
To ask the hon. Member for Battersea, representing the Church commissioners, how many parishes have a vacancy for (a) an incumbency and (b) a priest-in-charge; and how many (i) incumbent and (ii) priest-in-charge vacancies there have been in each of the last five years.
Andrew Rosindell
Shadow Parliamentary Under Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs)
To ask the hon. Member for Battersea, representing the Church commissioners, how many rural parishes have a vacancy for (a) an incumbency and (b) a priest-in-charge; and how many (i) incumbent and (ii) priest-in-charge vacancies there have been in each of the last five years.
Marsha de Cordova
The Second Church Estates Commissioner
The National Church Institutions do not hold information centrally about the number of vacancies in urban or rural parishes; the deployment of clergy to benefices is a matter for diocesan bishops and their leadership teams.
Data on benefice vacancies are only available at a diocesan level. However work is underway to update the national modelling of projected clergy populations, and the National Church Institutions are considering how they might gather and monitor data on vacancies.
To understand the local context in Romford or in the wider Chelmsford Diocese, it would be best to contact the Bishop of Barking, or the Archdeacon of West Ham. Contact details are available on the diocesan website.
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Matters concerning the established Church of England are dealt with at Question Time by a parliamentary representative of the church commissioners.
The church commissioner's role is to answer any parliamentary questions relating to the Church of England in the same way that a government minister may face questions about a particular government department.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner is appointed by the crown and is traditionally a backbench member of the party in government. The appointment lasts for the duration of the Parliament.
