Project Spire: Church of England's £100m reparations fund under threat

In January 2023, the Church of England announced Project Spire — a £100 million fund spread over nine years, established after forensic accountants Grant Thornton reviewed the ledgers of Queen Anne's Bounty, a predecessor to the Church's modern £10.1 billion endowment. 

Their finding was stark: the Bounty had invested in the South Sea Company, which transported approximately 34,000 enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, accumulating profits worth an estimated £1.4 billion in today's money. Those profits, the Church acknowledged, were folded into the endowment fund that exists to this day.

The announcement prompted a public apology from then-Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who said he was "deeply sorry" for the Church's links to slavery. 

Project Spire was designed to fund healing, justice and repair for communities most affected — including in the Caribbean, where the Church's missionary arm, the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, ran the Codrington plantation in Barbados and branded enslaved people with the word 'society' on their chests.

But the fund now faces two simultaneous threats. A legal challenge has been mounted over whether Church endowment money can lawfully be spent this way. 

Separately, Professor Richard Dale of the University of Southampton — a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society — argues Grant Thornton confused two legally distinct entities: the slave-trading South Sea Company and the Joint Stock of South Sea Annuities, a government bond vehicle. 

He contends Queen Anne's Bounty invested in the latter and "earned not one penny from the slave trade." 

The Church's historical advisers have rejected that conclusion. Twenty-seven MPs and peers have since called for the fund to be scrapped entirely.

• Project Spire is a £100 million, nine-year fund announced in January 2023 • Forensic accountants Grant Thornton found Queen Anne's Bounty invested in the South Sea Company, which transported approximately 34,000 enslaved Africans • Profits were estimated at £1.4 billion in today's money and absorbed into the Church's modern endowment • Then-Archbishop Justin Welby issued a public apology and committed to the fund • The Church's USPG missionary arm ran the Codrington plantation in Barbados, branding enslaved people with the word 'society' • Project Spire faces a legal challenge over the lawful use of endowment funds • Professor Richard Dale argues Grant Thornton confused two legally separate South Sea entities and that the Bounty earned nothing from the slave trade • 27 MPs and peers have called for the fund to be abandoned

For the Caribbean, Project Spire is not an abstract British institutional dispute. The Church of England ran plantations in Barbados through its missionary arm, the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, branding enslaved people with the word 'society' on their chests. 

At least 96 Church of England clergy received British government compensation when slavery was abolished in 1833 — compensation that took until 2015 to repay. 

If the Church's flagship reparations gesture collapses under legal challenge or historical revision, it sends a damaging signal to the broader AU-Caricom reparations movement at precisely the moment that movement has achieved its greatest international traction.

"123 nations voted in favour of the UN General Assembly resolution recognising transatlantic slavery as the gravest crime against humanity; only the US, Israel and Argentina voted against, while 52 countries — including the UK — abstained."

— BBC News, June 2026

The reparations commitment is a moral and Christian imperative: The Church Commissioners describe Project Spire as a 'moral imperative' for a responsible Christian investor. Bishop Mallett, a descendant of enslaved Africans who chairs the oversight committee, says the forensic evidence of the Church's financial entanglement with slavery demands tangible repentance, not silence.

The historical basis for Project Spire is fundamentally flawed and the fund should be abandoned: Professor Dale argues the Church Commissioners confused two legally distinct entities — the South Sea Company and the Joint Stock of South Sea Annuities — and that the Bounty's investments earned nothing from the slave trade. He says the Commissioners have a moral duty to correct a false historical narrative now embedded in global media and education.

Whatever the legal dispute, the Caribbean's lived reparations case is concrete and urgent: Farmer argues the Church's eventual support for abolition does not erase its role in initiating and sustaining enslavement. Mottley's updated Caricom manifesto, presented in Accra in June 2026, demands monetary compensation from churches, institutions and corporations — explicitly naming the entities now caught up in Project Spire's legal gridlock.

"When you're talking about the number of people who are trafficked, one person is one person too many. It has to be remembered that sometimes this can spiral off into discussions about numbers or profits, but actually these are human beings on ships."

— Dr Helen Paul, Economic historian, University of Southampton, via BBC InDepth