By Muvija M

LONDON (Reuters) -The Church of England will spend a record 1.6 billion pounds ($2.17 billion) over the next three years to boost clergy stipends and help cash-strapped parishes, it said on Monday, hoping to build on signs of a churchgoing revival among Britons.

The 2026-2028 spending plan is 36% higher than the previous period and will help revitalise local churches and outreach after four years of growth in church attendance, the mother church of 85 million Anglicans worldwide said.

A YouGov/Bible Society report this year found that a growing number of young men are attending church in Britain compared with before the COVID pandemic, upending an established trend of generational decline in Christianity across Western nations.

The number of regular worshippers across 16,000 Anglican churches in Britain grew 1.2% to 1.02 million in 2024. The country's overall population is roughly 68 million.

"Parishes and clergy are at the heart of everything we do in the Church ... It is also vital that we prioritise support for churches serving communities in the greatest need," the Church's interim leader, Archbishop Stephen Cottrell, said in the statement.

The plans to increase stipends - payments made to clergy to cover their cost of living - by 10.7% next year will be financed by the Church Commissioners, who manage the institution's 11.1 billion endowment fund. That fund grew by 10.3% in 2024.

The Church, under pressure over failures to handle child abuse complaints, said it would spend 30 million pounds on safeguarding work and confirmed 150 million pounds would be allocated to a redress scheme.

A separate Church Commissioners’ report estimated their reputational risk to be at an elevated level and warned of far-reaching impacts, as safeguarding failures undermine public confidence in the Church.

($1 = 0.7375 pounds)

(Reporting by Muvija M; editing by William James)