Finances at
St Peter's Church Farnborough, Hampshire
Church of England, Diocese of Guildford

We are a sub-committee of the PCC and manage their finances on a day to day basis. This includes budgeting, preparing monthly finance reports, reviewing income and expenditure in detail, seeking savings and putting the financial position to the church membership each year.

Is there humour in money? Maybe you wouldn’t expect it, but our meetings are happy occasions where we take great pleasure in doing the Lord’s work here.

St. Peter’s has four main funds, quite separate from one another. These are:

• The General Fund to pay for the costs of running our church and its activities. More details...
• The Missions Fund to support missionary work outside the parish and abroad. More details...
• The Parish Building Fund to save for major projects in the future. More details...
• The Charities Fund to contribute to charities, both Christian and secular. More details...

Where does the money come from?
The money needed to finance the work of St Peter's must come from Church members. We don't have any investments, or other source of funding, so what we can afford depends on the generosity of people who contribute.

The money to pay for all of this is given by Church members, mainly through bank transfers (which we encourage) and also through the weekly collections and envelope scheme.

A third significant part of the income is the tax refunds we obtain from the Inland Revenue if people have made a Gift Aid declaration.

Church collections at mid-week services in Advent and Lent, including the Midnight Carol Service and Holy Week services, all go to the Charities Fund. Church collections on the first Sunday of each month go to the Missions Fund. All other weekly collections go to the General Fund.

The Parish Building Fund only receives income from people who choose to donate to it and not from Church collections

Gift Aid
The Gift Aid scheme is a great help as it allows St Peter's to recover tax on gifts from taxpayers. At current rates, the church receives 28p from HMRC for every £1 given by a taxpayer.

To join the scheme a donor has to complete a Gift Aid declaration, which then means that we can recover tax on their gifts to any of our funds for as long as the donor wishes. There is no further paperwork and the declaration never has to be renewed, but the donor can cancel it or stop giving at any time.

Also, the donor does not have to commit to making any gifts. The only restriction is that we cannot recover tax on gifts given anonymously, for example loose cash in the collection.

If you want to support St. Peter’s or to know any more about our finances, please contact the treasurer 'here'.