Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, has called upon the federal government to make its Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme everlasting, saying that the grant had acted as a “lifeline” to churches.
The grant was first introduced 20 years ago by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown, and covers the fee of VAT on church repairs that cost over £1,000.
Cottrell was speaking on the Great Expectations conference on the Victoria and Albert Museum in regards to the current state of Britain’s historic church buildings and what could be done to preserve them.
A survey earlier this yr by the National Churches Trust suggested that as many as 2,000 churches in Britain could close down in the subsequent five years, with rural areas most affected.
Speaking on the conference, Cottrell argued that churches aren’t just places of worship, but community centres that provide a number of advantages, including social motion projects, cultural and artistic events and even just easy meeting places.
“There are virtually no other places in our communities today that do that, especially not in rural areas.
“To lose them, to hamper our ability to renew and restore them, to diminish them, will cause irreparable damage not simply to brick and stone, but to hearts and minds, because our church buildings matter, since the church matters, because community matters, and ultimately, because people and human flourishing matter.
“In a world where we too easily develop into too polarised, too separate from one another, and store up all these divisions, surely we must always be strengthening those places which bring us together.”
The Archbishop said that churches were doing what they may to pay for the upkeep of those often historic buildings, but said that the federal government’s scheme had been a “lifeline” for a lot of churches, and asked the federal government to make it everlasting, saying that many churches were “anxious” that the scheme could be discontinued.
