The Church Commissioners, who manage the Church’s historic assets, are considering a plan to transfer the £30 million funds they give to cathedrals and bishops to the dioceses. The extra cash could aid parishes that are struggling to find the funds to pay their clergy stipends and pensions.

Senior clergy fear that shifting control of the funds could lead to cutbacks in numbers of clergy staff employed in the nation’s 42 cathedrals and an end to special grants for education, mission and other projects.

Wealthy cathedrals such as Winchester and Durham would be barely affected, but cathedrals such as Bradford are already labouring under debts of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The Very Rev Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark, which receives about 10 per cent of its £777,000 budget from the Church Commissioners, said that the past 20 years had seen rising congregations in cathedrals at a time when the rest of the Church was in decline.

“They are trying to chop off what is manifestly a successful industry,” he said. “Attendance is going up, we are reaching children through education. The consequences of this would be a direct attack on the independent responsibility of cathedrals to take initiatives.”

Cathedrals might be forced to respond by charging their own dioceses for services offered, such as ordinations, to make ends meet, he said.

Professor David McClean, a leading member of the General Synod and Chancellor of the Newcastle Diocese said the proposal, outlined orally last week to cathedral deans, was no more than a “sensible rationalisation”. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme, he said: “It will need cathedrals to argue their corner as to why they should retain the level of staffing. I think most of them could make that case.”

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