Pay rises at English Chuches

You reported that English Churches could not “afford to give its staff a pay increase in line with inflation” because of cuts in the Supporting People programme.

A pay increase to staff was due earlier this year. English Churches depends on £23m of funding from Supporting People. At the time, the cuts in funding – and the way in which local authorities had chosen to implement them – had not worked their way through to us. However, they were anticipated by us and many others.

We simply did not know what level of pay increase we could afford at that stage. We decided to offer an initial 2% and revisit the issue once we knew our half-year financial results. We are currently reviewing the pay offer in the light of that data, as planned.

Peter Walters, chief executive English Churches Housing Group