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Table of Parochial Fees for 2008
The Church of England has legal fees for a variety of services and occasions, including weddings, funerals, burials of bodies and ashes, certificates (i.e. certified copies of entries in registers), permission to introduce monuments into churchyards and to add inscriptions to them, and faculties (i.e. permissions to make changes to church buildings or churchyards). Some of the fees are set by Act of Parliament, and some are set locally by Bradford Diocese or Eccleshill PCC (or the PCC Personnel Committee). The table below sets out the ones we are most commonly asked about. For the Church Commissioners' Table of Fees, click this link.
Fees usually increase annually on 1st January each year, and Parliament usually puts them up more than the rate of inflation. Please allow for an increase if you are planning for next year.
| Weddings Deposit of £100. We regret that a series of couples cancelling their wedding without telling us has forced us to ask for a deposit of £50 when weddings are booked. This is payable on booking. It is in addition to the fees below, and it will be returned on the wedding day after the service provided that there have been no problems. | ||
| £ | ||
| Diocese of Bradford | ||
| Wedding Service | N | 120.00 |
| Publication of Banns of Marriage | N | 15.00 |
| Marriage Certificate Note 1 | N | 4.00 |
| Total | 139.00 | |
| Eccleshill Parochial Church Council | ||
| Wedding Service | N | 127.00 |
| Publication of Banns of Marriage | N | 7.00 |
| Local costs (heat, cleaning, maintenance) | P | 40.00 |
| Total | 174.00 | |
| Verger's Fee | C | 19.00 |
| Clerk's Fee | C | 8.00 |
| Total basic cost of wedding with no extras | 340.00 | |
| Extras: Note 2 | ||
| Organist's Fee | C | 42.00 |
| Choir | C | 35.00 |
| Bellringer | C | 5.00 |
| Total with all these extras | 422.00 | |
| Banns of marriage and certificate of Banns
Note 3 | ||
| Reading the banns - Diocese | N | 15.00 |
| Reading the banns - PCC | N | 7.00 |
| Certificate - Diocese | N | 12.00 |
| Total | 34.00 | |
| Marriage certificate
provided on a later occasion | ||
| Diocese | N | 7.00 |
| Services of Prayer and Dedication following civil marriage Note 4 | ||
| Diocese of Bradford | P | 50.00 |
| Eccleshill Parochial Church Council | ||
| Church Service | P | 127.00 |
| Local costs (heat, cleaning, maintenance) | P | 40.00 |
| Total | 167.00 | |
| Verger's Fee | C | 19.00 |
| Total basic cost of service with no extras | 236.00 | |
| Extras: | ||
| Organist's Fee | C | 42.00 |
| Choir | C | 35.00 |
| Bellringer | C | 5.00 |
| Total with all these extras | 318.00 | |
| Funerals in church | ||
| Diocese of Bradford | N | 51.00 |
| Eccleshill Parochial Church Council | N | 45.00 |
| Local Costs (heat, cleaning, maintenance) | P | 33.00 |
| Organist | C | 42.00 |
| Verger | C | 19.00 |
| Total | 190.00 | |
| | ||
| Funerals at a crematorium | ||
| Diocese of Bradford | N | 96.00 |
| Eccleshill PCC (to cover minister's travel etc.) Note 5 | F | 14.00 |
| Total | 14.00 | |
| | ||
| Certificates
(i.e. Searches of registers) Note 6 | ||
| Diocese of Bradford | N | 12.00 |
| Eccleshill PCC | N | 7.00 |
| Total | 16.00 | |
Notes
N - these fees are set Nationally by Act of Parliament
P - these fees are set by the Parochial Church Council
C - these fees are set by Committee - the PCC's Personnel Committee
F - these fees are set by agreement with local funeral directors
(1) This takes account of a possible rise on 1st April.
(2) You don't have to have music or a bell for your wedding, but most people like to have them. We do recommend the choir, as although they aren't very numerous they make a big difference to everyone else's confidence in singing the hymns.
(3) If one of you lives in another parish then you will have to get your banns read in the parish church of the parish where you live, and collect a certificate to say they have been read, and bring it to us at St Luke's. There is a legal fee payable to the other church for this, as listed in the table. Also, if you are getting married elsewhere, these are the fees payable to St Luke's for your banns and certificate which you will need to take to the other church.
(4) The fee in the Register office for a civil marriage is £94 plus the cost of a marriage certificate (see their web site), so the PCC has decided that the church fee for these services will be reduced by this amount. There are no statutory fees payable, but a sum will still be sent to Bradford Diocese as set out. The Register Office fees are set by a different Act of Parliament from the Church Fees, and they may rise on 1st April each year (in which case ours will reduce by the corresponding amount).
(5) In practice, because they like using notes rather than coins, several funeral directors pay a flat total of £110.
(6) This is the fee for looking through a register of baptisms or burials and providing one certified copy of an entry if there is one, or a certificate to say there isn't one. Please note that the fee is payable whether or not the search is successful. The fee only covers the first hour of the search - there's a further fee for longer searches (but we've never had to charge that yet!).
Please note that there are other fees for other activities and occasions: the above table only sets out the ones we are most commonly asked about.
Paying the wedding fees. As you will see from the above, when you pay we have to pass on the different amounts of money to different people and bodies. So we ask you to pay for your wedding in cash by putting different amounts of cash in different bank bags, using a set of "tickets" which we will give you when you book your wedding. This means we can check the amounts and pass them on without having to make change. We ask you to pay at your rehearsal, please.
Please also note that there is a legal obligation on you to pay the fees for your wedding, so if we do not receive the fees then your wedding service may be delayed or cancelled. We haven't ever had any trouble about this at St Luke's, but there have been stories of embarrassment elsewhere, and we would hate your wedding service to run into any kind of unfortunate trouble because of the money. If you propose to pay by cheque then we require the payment a fortnight in advance to allow the cheque to clear.
Fees for 2009
At the time of writing we have no information about likely fees beyond 2008. Fees generally increase on 1st January, and comparing 2008 with 2007 they went up by 5% mostly. We advise you to budget for at least a similar increase next year. As soon as we have any information we will put a link to it from this page.
Eccleshill PCC usually considers fees for the next year at its meeting in November, and after it has done so we will post the information on this site.
John Hartley
This web page was last updated on 7th February 2008.