CHURCHES hoping to construct inexpensive homes for his or her communities on pockets of land that they own — or as a part of schemes corresponding to rebuilding parish halls — have been invited to use for grants to pay for expert advice from a £3.2-million fund from the Archbishops’ Council.
The fund will run for five years. Grants of as much as £25,000 can be found towards the price of an architect, consultant, and other skilled fees needed to evaluate the feasibility of housing proposals on church land. Grants can be made to assist meet the price of navigating the planning process.
The fund follows the publication, in 2021, of the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community, Coming Home (News, 26 February 2021), which concluded that the Church had a “major role” to play in addressing the the nation’s housing needs, “ensuring that our land and resources are used for the blessing of all, and never only seen as potential financial assets for our own profit”. It encouraged each dioceses and parishes to “grow to be more deeply involved”.
The barriers for parishes concerned constraints of time, lack of specialist skills and anxieties concerning the risks involved, it said. Since publication, a Housing Project team has been established at Church House, led by Beki Winter, formerly of the charity Housing Justice.
“Many parishes have issues with their buildings or property, but don’t all the time realise that these problems could possibly be opportunities to offer some housing,” Ms Winter said last week. “An outdated church hall could possibly be rebuilt to incorporate just a few flats above it, or a surplus automobile park could possibly be redeveloped to offer some social homes. There are many creative ways to make use of church land or property to offer housing for people in need, whilst improving community facilities or bolstering parish funds.”
A grant has already been made to Emmanuel, Preston, a Grade II listed constructing that is not any longer protected for worship. The congregation has been worshipping within the neighbouring community centre. The aim now could be to create inexpensive housing on the church site, through the creation of a Community Land Trust to which the diocese will transfer the assets and in partnership with a neighborhood ethical developer. The use of a listed constructing for inexpensive housing within the Church of England was “treading latest ground”, Ms Winter said on Tuesday. “If they will do it there, it opens the door for other opportunities.”
In Chorley, a congregation had been told that an unlisted church built with porous stone would cost £750,000 to be made watertight, leaving structural issues in place. The housing team was now working with them to analyze whether the church could possibly be dismantled and a latest church built on it, with inexpensive housing built on the neighbouring field. Meanwhile, a 60-year-old parish-hall site at St Martin’s, Fulwood, in Preston, has already been developed into 14 inexpensive homes and a latest energy-efficient parish centre.
Collectively, the Church of England holds roughly 200,000 acres of land. Much diocesan land is “glebe”, currently required by law to be held to fund clergy stipends. Many local parish churches also hold land in their very own right. The Coming Home report noted that the event of housing or other uses of land or properties could cause controversy, “exacerbated by the interpretation and application of charity law”. The requirement to secure the “best terms reasonable obtainable” was often interpreted as “best price”. This, it said, “risks the perception that the Church doesn’t care about its communities and is more keen on money than mission”.
While noting the “enormous” financial pressures faced by dioceses, it argued that the sale of land or assets by dioceses to sustain current patterns of ministry was not “the very best solution to use our resources properly. . . For stewardship to be exercised responsibly it must clearly profit the entire created order and never just be geared towards the preservation of the institution.”
The view of the legal office of the National Church Institutions is that PCCs are already in a position to sell land at lower than full value: for instance, to satisfy local people need, provided that the land was not held on trust for purposes which precluded it getting used in this fashion. Guidance for PCCs, Faith in Affordable Housing, commissioned by Housing Justice, is accessible online. A mapping tool for dioceses showing all church-owned land and buildings in England is currently being upgraded.
On Tuesday, Ms Winter said that the fund would help churches to work out what was feasible. “Ultimately it remains to be right down to PCCs to be sure they’re meeting their charitable objectives. If a hall is value say £500,000 in the marketplace but for an inexpensive housing scheme it will achieve significantly less, then the PCC needs to think about what’s most significant to them from a missional perspective and what other demands are on their funds.”
The success of the fund wouldn’t be illustrated by what number of houses were built — given the timeframe involved — however the variety of applications and generation of best practice and case studies, she said.
In 2021, the General Synod resolved that responding to housing need was “an integral a part of the mission and ministry of the Church of England” (News, 16 July 2021). In response to the Coming Home advice that the Archbishops’ Council bring laws to the Synod enabling dioceses to eliminate glebe assets “for appropriate missional purposes aside from solely, as currently, for ministry costs”, the Synod’s motion requested that the Archbishops’ Council “consider the necessity for change to the legal criteria for the management, use and disposal of Church held non-operational property that falls under the remit of the Church Property Measure and Mission and Pastoral Measure”. To date, nothing has been brought back to the Synod.
Last 12 months, the Church Housing Association and Church Development Agency were set as much as work on speeding up the delivery of inexpensive homes, mainly on diocesan and parish land (News, 29 November 2024).
housingproject@churchofengland.org
