Diocese of Liverpool to pilot a voluntary furlough scheme for curates
On Monday 27th April a number of volunteer curates across our diocese will start a four week period of furlough.
In a first for the Church of England the pilot scheme is part of the many prudent actions we are taking to manage our finances through the current crisis. It enables the diocese to use the Government’s Job Retention Scheme in the same way it has furloughed staff at St James House. We believe this decisive, prudent action will mitigate the financial impact of the crisis and ease pressure on parish share.
We have only chosen to consider a voluntary scheme for furloughing curates as this is new territory for us and for the Church of England. We are able to consider curates because of the technical, legal status of their ministry. It is not a value judgment on the ministry of individuals or of curacy in general. Nor is it a judgment on the parishes. And if a curate or their training incumbent has not wanted to be furloughed then that is perfectly fine.
The diocese of Liverpool has always sought to be realistic about how to manage this crisis. Our aim is not simply to survive for a short period of time. We are clear about the financial challenges we face. We have to look at all ways in which we not only come through this crisis but have a platform to be able to continue to build the church and sustain a Christian presence.
We have considered this prayerfully and carefully. Through this we will be able to explore the impact of taking an absolutely key group of people out of frontline ministry so that if we had to take similar measures in the future when the situation would undoubtedly be more acute for us, we will know the best way to do this to serve and protect our ministers, lay people and churches.
This is a limited action with a limited aim. We have not made any decisions about furloughing other clergy. If we did start to think about that we would look at wider consultation with colleagues, parishes and worshipping communities across our diocese. But the learning from this pilot would be crucial to that wider decision-making process.
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