Financial relationship between the parish and the Diocese of East Anglia
An unusual aspect of the Cathedral parish is that the costs of running the Cathedral estate are shared between the parish and the diocese. This is because our Cathedral is both the ‘Mother Church’ of the diocese as well as being its own parish community day in, day out.
The total running costs for the Cathedral estate tend to be around £600,000 each year. The parish pays for some of these running costs directly (i.e. the ones that specifically relate to parish activities) and also pays a fixed annual amount to the diocese as its own contribution to the remaining costs. This contribution from the parish and income from the Narthex (such as from the café) both help to reduce the amount that the diocese has to fund.
In 2025 the fixed annual amount paid to the diocese was £123,000. This was £48,000 more than in the previous year and was made possible by the increased offertory donations we received in 2025, which was a direct result of the stewardship campaign we ran in autumn 2024. This campaign led to a lot of parishoners increasing their existing regular donation or setting up a new regular donation. We are extremely grateful to those parishoners who chose to do this.
Summary of Our Result for 2024
Overall summary
In 2025, the parish received income of £377,586 and had expenditure of £335,934[1]. This meant that the parish recorded a surplus of £41,652.
Comparison to 2024
Sections 4 and 5 provide a breakdown of types of income and expenditure in 2025, with 2024 shown for comparison. As the chart shows, the main reason why income was higher in 2025 was because we received more offertory income than in 2024, which was a result of benefitting from a full 12 months of higher offertory donations, following the successful stewardship campaign in autumn 2024. The main reason why expenditure was higher than in 2024 was because we increased our fixed annual contribution to the diocese from £75,000 to £123,000. We also saw an increase in diocesan levies, which is based on a percentage of the previous year’s offertory collection.
Comparison to budget
Our actual surplus of £41,652 achieved for 2025 was £19,064 less than our budgeted surplus for 2024 of £60,716. The main reason for the lower surplus was because, at the time of setting the budget, we had not agreed to an increase in our fixed payment to the diocese from £75,000 to £123,000 – this meant that expenditure was higher than we had budgeted, although this unbudgeted extra cost was partially offset by higher-than-budgeted income, with our offertory income comfortably exceeding what we had modelled it would be in our budget.
[1] These figures are based on our unrestricted income and unrestricted expenditure.
Summary of Parish Funds as at 31st December 2025
A summary of the parish’s funds as at 31st December 2025 is given below:
| £ | ||
| Cash & bank accounts – unrestricted funds | 258,977 | |
| Debtors and creditors | 10,435 | |
| Total funds | 269,412 | |
Funds made up of:
| £ | ||
| Restricted funds – Alive in Faith | 49,732 | |
| Restricted funds – St Anthony’s Bread | 50,182 | |
| Restricted funds – Other | 36,884 | |
| Unrestricted funds | 132,614 | |
| Total funds | 269,412 | |
There was a fairly even split at the end of December 2025 between restricted and unrestricted funds. Restricted funds relate to money that we hold that we have to use for a specific purpose. The two main categories of restricted funds we have are (a) our share of funds donated by parishioners in previous years to the diocese’s Alive in Faith project, and (b) a fund called St Anthony’s Bread, which was set up help relieve poverty for those living in Norwich. We will use both of these funds in the coming years for the purposes for which they are intended.
Income
The table below breaks down our income sources for 2025 and compares the amounts to 2024.
Expenditure
The table below breaks down our expenditure sources for 2025 and compares the amounts to 2024.
Chair of the Finance Committee
June 2026