THE chair of the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), Simon Thurley, has encouraged churches to use for a share of the £100 million that the fund expects to take a position in places of worship over the following three years.
Applications have fallen lately, with reports that churches are finding the funding difficult to access. In response, Mr Thurley has drawn attention to the simplification of application criteria.
“We have just 4 very straightforward things that we’re searching for,” he said on Tuesday of last week. “Saving heritage, making higher access, environmental improvements, and making places more resilient. They all ought to be very straightforward to churches to make a case. . . Map them on to what you would like to your place of worship. That is all we would like to see.
“Don’t get entangled with expensive consultants telling you to do that, that, and the opposite. . . We will take very seriously any application that hits those 4 things in any combination.”
On Tuesday, the Fund announced that it had awarded £4.68 million to the Church of England’s Conservation Grants Scheme, which has been run for the reason that Fifties in partnership with a gaggle of trusts and currently awards about £250,000 a yr for the preservation of church interiors. The award will mean that the scheme can invest nearly £5 million over the following five years, including funding constructing repairs that profit historic objects.
This is the primary grant from a recent £15-million NLHF funding pot designated for places of worship. The aim is to fund “strategic projects” that may have a “broad impact across the places of worship sector to handle widespread needs and challenges, and develop strategic projects with a concentrate on sustainability, accelerating recent ideas and interventions, and proactively tackling long-standing heritage issues at scale”.
Last week, Mr Thurley said that rural churches, specifically, had found it difficult to access the fund’s grant programmes, or doubted whether or not they would achieve success. “We feel that there are some geographical areas where we must be more proactive,” he said. “What we don’t need to see is people pondering ‘We are usually not in with a likelihood.’”
Another aim was to “look a bit more scientifically at among the long-term problems”, and to fund organisations “finding the answers to difficult questions”. The Fund was keen to take a position in “experimental” ideas, which, if successful, could possibly be more widely promoted.
The £15 million is along with the £84 million expected to be awarded to places of worship over the following three years. A spokeswoman said that the entire was “based on predicted income and past investment through the programme”.
Since its Grants for Places of Worship fund was absorbed into its existing heritage programmes for all buildings in 2017 (News, 7 April 2017), the quantity awarded annually to places of worship has fallen. Between 2022 and 2013, NLHF overall funding fell by nearly two-thirds in real terms.
The previous fund, which averaged allocations of £25-million a yr, had covered the fee of urgent structural repairs and enhancements to listed churches in England since 1994, having taken over from other state bodies (the HLF is sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport). Friends of Friendless Churches has reported that total allocations now stand at about £10 million.
Mr Thurley said that, currently, about ten per cent of the Fund’s total awards went to places of worship. “But I feel it’s true that there was a little bit of a drop-off in applications, not a drop-off within the amount of cash available.”
There are plans on the Fund to work with places of worship to “increase awareness of the funding available, break down perceived barriers to accessing funding, and supply support for those making applications”.
The announcement is available in the wake of warnings about the fee of maintaining the Church’s 16,000 buildings, 12,500 of that are listed. The majority of those costs have to be met currently by congregations. The former Second Church Estates Commissioner, Andrew Selous, told the House of Commons last yr that the typical annual cost for the upkeep and repairs to parish churches alone stood at £150 million.
The National Churches Trust estimates that clearing the backlog of repairs to C of E churches would cost no less than £1 billion, and has suggested that no less than £50 million of additional annual public funding for repairs is required (News, 26 January). More than 900 buildings at the moment are on Historic England’s At Risk register.
The government-commissioned Taylor review on the sustainability of English churches and cathedrals, published in 2017, argued that the C of E should prepare for reduced reliance on government funding, and called for “a cultural shift in attitudes towards church constructings such that communities realise there are resources they will use, and congregations have the arrogance to share space and, where appropriate, to ask for a good income” (News, 21 December 2017). But — beyond 2020 — it advisable that the Government should provide a Minor Repairs Fund of £15 million per yr, and a Major Repairs Fund of £36 million per yr.
Between 2018 and 2020, a pilot of a few of its recommendations was carried out in Manchester and Suffolk, providing churches with access to a community development adviser (who could assist in making grant applications), a cloth support officer, and a minor-repairs fund of £1 million, with a cap of £10,000 per bid. A key finding of the evaluation was the high demand for a major-repairs fund, with a “large reported conservation deficit”. In only one diocese — Norwich — this deficit, based on quinquennial inspections between 2012 and 2017, was estimated to be £63 million.
Many of those interviewed expressed concern that the National Lottery Heritage Fund was proving “increasingly difficult for places of worship to access” (News, 17 January 2020).They drew attention to competition with skilled bodies which are also eligible; an emphasis on community criteria; and the demoralising effect of being turned down. Community engagement activities were “seen as prohibitive for those listed places of worship with limited capability”.
Last yr, dioceses got £2.8 million by the Archbishops’ Council to employ church-buildings support officers (CBSOs) to advise on the maintenance of buildings. An additional £6.2 million was allocated across the dioceses for making grants of as much as £12,000 for repairs (News, 9 November 2023).
Last week, Mr Thurley noted that replacing a single lead downpipe could cost £12,000, which a small parish church would must work “jolly hard” to boost. The likelihood of getting “big chunks of cash directly from the Treasury” was “quite small, particularly in the present climate”, he said.
But he drew attention to the “unbelievable” Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme, set to run until the tip of March 2025, which enables applicants to use for a grant to cover VAT costs incurred when carrying out constructing repairs. The grants available to Historic England had been “reduced enormously”, nevertheless, and he would love to see them increased.
Last week, the Heritage Minister, Sir Chris Bryant, said: “The UK’s places of worship are a rare a part of the tapestry of our national identity. Many have marked our births, deaths, and marriages for hundreds of years. They have been criss-crossed with the scars of countless on a regular basis events and moments of national crisis and celebration. They can offer sanctuary from the slings and arrows of life for people of all faiths and none, a spot to be calmed or inspired.
“Thanks to funding provided by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, these essential buildings will proceed to thrive and serve the communities that cherish them for generations to return.”
The director for cathedrals and church buildings for the Archbishops’ Council, Emily Gee, welcomed the contribution to the Conservation Grants Scheme, and paid tribute to “all of the hundreds of dedicated volunteers who work so hard and provides their time to making sure that the heritage of our church buildings, so cherished by our communities, is sustained into the long run”.
