MINUTES OF THE JOINT PAROCHIAL CHURCH COUNCIL
Meeting Date 29th May 2024
Meeting Venue St. Thomas Church
Attendees As recorded in the attendance book
Prayers Father David opened the meeting with a prayer.
Apologies Mrs. Nikki Hirst, Ms. Susan Mackenzie, Fr. David Watson, Mr. Ken Collins
Minutes of last meeting These were accepted as a true record
Matters arising, not covered by items on the agenda Rood Cross – to read “it was felt that we would help to find a suitable home for it”.
Mission Opportunities – to read “to form a sensory area”.
Buildings St. Peter’s: Some of the bulbs in church have been replaced and the stained-glass window now has 8 L.E.D. bulbs instead of tubes. Next week, a lighting engineer who has worked in various churches is going to have a look at the church lighting and hopefully come up with a replacement scheme. The control panel was causing issues, but it is now working again after repairing the sensor.
St. Thomas: Hopefully, the ownership of St. Thomas will soon be resolved. It would appear that the Diocese may own the building and we lease it, paying a peppercorn rent.
Finance Graham Roberts, proposed by Joan Colmer and seconded by Debbie Roscoe was re-elected unanimously Treasurer for the following year.
After the Treasurer’s report, a discussion took place on the utilities and how we could cut down on the costs.
See Treasurer’s report attached.
Safeguarding / GDPR There were no safeguarding issues to report since the last meeting. Sue Way advised that there was additional training that needed to be completed by everybody and she would give more details at a later date.
Mission Opportunities REAL, a messy church type activity will be piloted in St. Thomas, in partnership with St. Mark’s. It is aimed at children up to the age of 9 years. It is hoped that it will be held monthly, on the last Sunday of the month, starting on Sunday 30th June in the afternoon.
Sensory Church – The equipment has been purchased and it is aimed at families with additional needs. It is a Fresh Expression, starting a new worshipping community, om top of what is already in place. It will start as a parent drop in café, progressing to parent and children. It is hoped to start the Sensory Café and Church in September, and to hold it on monthly basis.
Parish Away Day – Saturday 28th September. 2nd Unity in Growth Day in Bovey Tracey with Bishop Lindsay Urwin being the keynote speaker. It is hoped that he will come to the Plymouth area for 2 weeks, at a date yest to be decided.
Corpus Christi Festival – Sunday 2nd June. This will be a regional event with food and wine supplied. The timetable is as follows: 4.00 pm Talk by Bishop Paul, 4.45 pm refreshments, 6.00 pm Vespers and Benediction led by Bishop Paul.
Petertide – This year, the Patronal day falls on a Saturday, so it is transferred to the Sunday.
Open day – Wednesday 26th June. The church will be open from 10.30am to 4.30 pm for guided tours, historic items on display, stalls refreshments with the wedding and baptism registers available
PL1 meal – Thursday 27th June
Friday 28th June – the school will be holding their Petertide concert in church at 1.30 pm
Food Larder – the shelves are now stocked little and often, with it being open again at all times.
Cost of Living – with the summer approaching, the warm space will be replaced with a place of welcome.
Sound System – we will be applying for a faculty to replace both the sound system and the C.C.T.V. system in St. Peter’s.
Baby Basics – will be celebrating the 2nd anniversary in June.
Primary School The school recently had a SIAM inspection and passed with flying colours.
Rood Cross A lot of discussion has taken place regarding the cross and paperwork from 2009 indicated that we had permission to dispose of it.
Dates of PCC Meetings for the coming year Wednesday 10th July at St. Peter’s
Wednesday 4th September at St. Thomas
Wednesday 6th November at St. Peter’s
Wednesday 8th January at St. Thomas
Wednesday 26th March at St. Peter’s
All P.C.C. meetings to start at 7.00 pm
Blessing There being no further business, Fr. David closed the meeting with a blessing.
Signed as a true record:
Treasurer's Report
As there has been no financial report on this year, this report is for the 1st 4 months of the year.
Our total income for the period was £26,665.
£4,472 came directly from giving in the 2 churches. In addition to this, the Parish Giving Scheme was £1,767 plus a further £432 gift aid was reclaimed by the Diocese on our behalf. We currently still only have 9 givers in the scheme, but hopefully, more will join as time goes on. As I have said in the past, very few members of our churches increase their giving on a yearly basis. This is one of the big advantages of the Parish Giving Scheme as members are reminded and offered the opportunity to increase their contribution on the anniversary of their joining the scheme. There are still some people who don’t give at all, and regrettably that does include some members of our P.C.C.
In these months, we received £7,858 from St. Peter’s Hostel for the January and April Loan and Common Fund payments. There were additional donations totalling £8,360 to help the running costs of the churches, £3,000 of which went towards paying part of the electricity bill in St. Peter’s.
We received a further £529 in the period from the card reader at the back of St. Peter’s.
The Extra Forms were sent out a number of weeks ago, and to date I have only received 13 completed forms. A reminder will be going into this week’s bulletin and hopefully, I will then be able to send off our claim to the Inland Revenue. Please encourage people to complete these forms as it is free money into the church.
We received £1,600 from Transforming Plymouth Together which was used to purchase food vouchers that are available to people in need and to help towards supporting the Community lunches.
Total expenditure for the same period was £32,498.
As usual, our major expenses were the utility bills which accounted for £11,899, with an additional £4,145 for insurance.
As I said when talking about the income, we paid £4,000 towards our Common Fund for this year and a further £3,858 off our loan from the Diocese. We now have the pleasure of looking forward to this year’s Common Fund payment of £17,642, an increase of £708 on 2023, and an outstanding amount of £13,642.