REPORTS that church attendance figures are inflated by vicars have been dismissed as nonsense by the Bishop of Blackburn.

A survey carried out by the Sunday Times newspaper found that some clergy guessed their attendances or deliberately inflated them to protect their parishes from closure. Some added up to 25% on to attendance figures.

But the Rt Rev Alan Chesters said few people kept exact records and many probably under-estimated congregation sizes.

"It is an inexact science. Take the average church. It will have three Sunday services - who is counting?'' he said.

Bishop Chesters said some churches were flourishing while others were struggling to fill the pews. "What I do think has happened is that people either go to church or don't go. You don't get the fringe of people who used to attend, say, at Easter, but the people who do attend go quite well.

"In this diocese, we did a survey in the 80s which showed that attendances had remained pretty steady or gone up slightly.''

He added that a further problem with calculating figures was churchgoers' definition of regular attendance.

"For some people that means they appear in church once a fortnight, where I would prefer them to come once a week. How many times do you have to go to church to count as a member of the Church of England?''

He added that a more precise way of calculating attendances might be to count congregations on only a few days of the year, rather than over the whole 52 weeks.

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