Over £900,000 awarded to assist UK churches stay open amid growing funding pressures

Hundreds of churches across the UK are receiving vital financial support to stay open and protected, as rising repair costs and shrinking funding streams place historic buildings under increasing strain.

UK charity National Churches Trust has distributed over £900,000 in its latest round of grants to churches, chapels and meeting houses nationwide.

The funding will go towards pressing restoration needs and can allow buildings to proceed serving their communities, with worship, social support and outreach.

The announcement comes at a difficult time for churches. Changes introduced earlier in 2025 to the Government’s Listed Places of Worship Grants Scheme mean that VAT relief on repairs is now capped, making many projects significantly costlier.

The Listed Places of Worship Grants Scheme has provided crucial support to churches for greater than 20 years, helping 1000’s reclaim VAT on essential repair work.

Since its launch in 2001, around 13,000 places of worship have benefited. However, recent government changes mean the scheme is now only guaranteed until March 2026, with a recent £25,000 cap on VAT claims no matter the full repair cost.

With no certainty beyond next yr, inflation and the rising cost of materials, many churches are facing growing funding gaps and delaying urgent maintenance work amid fears the scheme might be withdrawn altogether.

Despite this, the Trust says targeted investment delivers clear returns. Research suggests that for each £1 spent on a church constructing, around £16 of social good is generated through community use, volunteering, cultural activities and support services.

The funding has been made possible through a mixture of individual donors, legacies and partnerships with other grant-making bodies, including the Wolfson Foundation and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Through these partnerships, additional fabric repair grants amounting to as much as £10,000 have been awarded to churches facing urgent structural issues.

Chief executive of the Wolfson Foundation, Paul Ramsbottom, said churches remain central to local life: “At the center of local communities sits churches: places of worship, places of support for local people and places of shared heritage.

“The Wolfson Foundation has a selected interest within the heritage of those remarkable buildings, and we’re pleased to proceed our partnership with the National Churches Trust to assist keep them open, protected and in advantageous condition for the long run.”

Among the projects supported on this round of grants is a Saxon church within the Cotswolds, which can install its first toilet after greater than 1,000 years after receiving a grant from the Headley Trust of £7,000, removing a serious barrier to older people, families and people with disabilities.

In Oxford, funding has helped keep a 14th-century church open after it got here near closure, while in Nottingham, a concrete tower at a Nineteen Sixties church on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register is being stabilised after years of degradation.

Grants have also enabled a church in Lancashire to perform safety-critical repairs so it will possibly proceed delivering its programme aimed toward addressing child poverty. The Trust noted that many buildings are cared for nearly entirely by volunteers.

A recent survey by the Trust suggests that as much as 2,000 churches across the UK could close by 2030. While most congregations remain optimistic, around 5% reported doubts about whether their church could proceed over the subsequent five years.

Rural churches were identified as particularly vulnerable, alongside Methodist and Presbyterian denominations facing sharper financial pressures.

The chief executive of the National Churches Trust, Claire Walker, said urgent motion is required.

“The costs for caring for them – and we’re talking about a few of our nation’s most significant buildings – mustn’t fall onto local people to fund,” she said.

“We need to seek out creative solutions to assist keep them open and in use. We urge the UK Government to point out leadership and work with heritage organisations and Christian denominations to create a plan to properly fund churches, chapels and meeting houses within the UK, in order that they can remain at the center of local communities for generations to come back.”