Neil O’Brien is the Conservative MP for Harborough and on Friday he submitted this question which is entitled “To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, what average weekly attendance was in each year since 1994.” The person who has submitted the response is Andrew Selous who is the Second Church Estates Commissioner and he is the South West Bedfordshire MP. His response is below and it is also on this location and he has included a very significant list of documents. Two people have said Yes for his response so they are very interested in this.

The National Church Institutions first started collecting attendance data centrally in the autumn of 2000; as a result, it is not possible to publish data for the period 1994-1999. A methodological change also took place between 2000 and 2003 which means statistics for those years are not directly comparable with the data now collected. The data displayed below shows the longest period of comparable figures available, from 2003-2022.

Attendance figures are collected from churches for the first 4 Sundays of October and in the following Monday-Saturday midweek periods – this exercise is referred to as the “October count”. Figures include attendance at baptisms, as these usually take place in service, but not attendance at weddings and funerals. Attendance at services for schools is NOT included in the average weekly and average Sunday attendance figures but is reported separately.

In 2013, the question was changed to specifically ask about attendance at school services. Prior to 2013, it was apparent that some churches included such attendance in their reported figures while others did not. The change in question during this year resulted in a large change in the average weekly attendance from 2012 to 2013 and a more consistent practice across the church as a whole.