House-for-Duty Priests - do the figures add up?

This is the normal package I've noticed being advertised: "It is expected that for a House-for-Duty appointment the priest will carry out Sunday duties plus at least 2 other days each week. The house is for themselves and their family." What I'm wondering is where that apparently standard package comes from? I'm curious because I'm not sure that it is a well-founded figure. In fact, I think that it is probably over-pricing the house and/or underpricing the value of the ministry offered.

The latest I heard was that the cost to the CofE of a stipendiary post is £42k. This is made up of about £22k stipend, about £10k housing and £10k pension and other on-costs. Now, let's say a week consists of 21 sessions of potential work and let's take away 5 of those; 3 for a day off and 2 others to get a life (it really ought to be more but I'm aware of the realities in many cases). That gives us 16 sessions. On this schema, the house-for-duty package seems to be 5-7 sessions (2 or 3 per day and one for Sunday).

Now, if we take the whole £42k, then the stipend is worth about 8 (or 9) of those sessions, the on-costs about 4 and the housing about 4.

I hope it is now clear that, on this basis, a house for duty post, if offered pro-rata, should be asking for a work commitment of no more than Sunday duties and a further 3 sessions (1 or 1.5 days, depending).

Of course we should note that the £42k figure shouldn't really be treated as entirely remuneration; some of the on-costs are the kinds of things that are costs to the employer but not normally counted as remuneration. In addition we should note that there is a difficulty about insisting that housing goes with the job (in the case of stipindiaries) and then 'charging' a high rate for it when given the choice families might choose a cheaper house and more disposable income. There should be a notional discount in the figures for the value to the CofE of keeping someone 'on site'. These consideration would have the effect of reducing the sessional-value of a house for duty.

Now, why worry about this? Surely most house-for-duty priests are early retirees? Well, yes, at the moment. However, look at the financial situation. It does seem to me likely that in the future we could be seeing a greater number of self-supporting ministers who may be earning from another job or portfolio of work (eg consultancies). In the latter case, the abmount of their available time is crucial. Whether a house-for-duty post asks 1.5 or 2.5 days of them makes a difference to their earning capability and therefore to the viability of the self-supporting part of their portfolio. In other words, the housing needs to be costed properly so as to make for a fair possibility of the housing offer for SSMs.

Now if we said that the real figure for remuneration is £36k, then a session would be worth about £2.25k pa. On that basis the stipend would amount to about 9 or 10 sessions per week and the housing to 4 or 5 ie Sunday plus no more than 4 sessions which might reasonably equate to 2 days max. Obviously this figure is closer to the actual H4D advertised package. This would appear to be, then, the kind of figure actually being used somewhere to determine the value. Which means that we should stop being presented with the whole £42k figure as if it were remuneration ...
House-for-Duty Priests � Bishop David’s Blog: