Church Commissioners

No. 1 Millbank, built for the Church Commissioners by W. D. Caroe (1903)

The Church Commissioners is a body managing the historic property assets of the Church of England. It was set up in 1948 combining the assets of Queen Anne's Bounty, a fund dating from 1704 for the relief of poor clergy, and of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners formed in 1836.

The Church Building Act 1818 granted money and established the Church Building Commission to build churches in the cities of the Industrial Revolution. These churches became known variously as Commissioners' churches, Waterloo churches or Million Act churches. The Church Building Commission became the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1836.

An earlier Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenues Commission had been set up under the first brief administration of Sir Robert Peel in 1835 with a wide remit, “to consider the State of the Established Church in England and Wales, with reference to Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenues” (Minutes of the Commission, 9/2/1835); this body redistributed wealth between the dioceses and changed diocesan boundaries, and the permanent Ecclesiastical Commission was formed the following year.

The value of the Commissioners' assets was around £5.5 billion as at the end of 2012.[1] Most of the income is used to pay clergy pensions.

The Commissioners also oversee pastoral reorganisation, the consent of the Commissioners being required for establishing or dissolving team and group ministries, uniting, creating or dissolving benefices and parishes, and the closing of consecrated church buildings and graveyards.

The Church Commissioners are now based at Church House, Westminster, London, having long occupied No. 1 Millbank.[2] However, the Millbank building was sold in 2005 to the House of Lords for accommodation of members and staff; the Commissioners completed the move to Church House in 2007.[3] They used to be an exempt charity under English law.[4]

Current commissioners

The Secretary (i.e. chief executive) of the Church Commissioners is Andrew Brown

See also

References

  1. ↑ Asset Management | Church of England
  2. ↑ Historic England. "Details from image database (418227)". Images of England. Retrieved 20 April 2015.
  3. ↑ "Church Commissioners complete sale of Millbank site". www.churchofengland.org. The Church of England. 29 March 2005. Retrieved 17 August 2015.
  4. ↑ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/exempt-charities-cc23/exempt-charities
  5. ↑ http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/structure/churchcommissioners/organisation-and-governance/the-church-commissioners.aspx

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, November 19, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.