Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 199)
TUESDAY 28 MARCH 2006
THE REV'D
CANON MICHAEL
AINSWORTH, MS
PAULA GRIFFITHS,
THE VERY
REV'D
DAVID BRINDLEY,
THE VERY
REV'D
COLIN SLEE
AND MR
TREVOR COOPER
Q180 Chairman: Turning specifically
to cathedrals, as you know, the Committee visited Lincoln a few
weeks ago where they suggested to us that they needed a million
pounds a year to maintain the cathedral in a steady state. That
is just one cathedral. We understand that the grant available
from English Heritage has been reduced to £1 million. Do
you feel that English Heritage are giving sufficient priority
to cathedrals and how serious is the problem affecting the cathedrals?
Mr Slee: English Heritage has
been brilliant. The English Heritage Cathedrals Scheme, which
has run for 15 years, has been quite remarkable in the manner
that a backlog of overdue conservation has been tackled. The grave
concern at present is that, with a cut in the budget, there has
been a real cut to English Heritage and therefore that is knocked
on and what was about £3.5 million to cathedrals is now down
to £1 million with a £50,000 cap. What we are really
looking at is that backlog once again beginning to grow and in
10 years' time we could find ourselves where we were 15 years
ago and that is a major concern because conservation work, by
its very nature, is much cheaper if it is done when it is required
rather than hanging around trying to raise the funding. We would
not want to be critical of English Heritage as an organisation.
My own experience of English Heritage is that working with them
has been absolutely wonderful and so long as one consults early
enough and they are on board there is no difficulty. Different
places obviously have different issues. Lincoln's problem is that
it is absolutely vast and has no very large local population.
Inner city cathedrals like mine—we could get five Southwarks
into Lincoln—not only is the task itself therefore smaller
but we have a very large population sustaining us, so we have
run a scheme that cathedrals run amongst themselves, a sort of
Robin Hood principle where we look at the amount of money that
we have and, on a number of fronts, there is a different pecking
order in terms of how we can go for grants. There has been proportional
support from English Heritage according to one's ability. One
or two cathedrals have not even applied at all because they have
said "We are able to fund this ourselves." Yes, if English
Heritage was given a realistic budget that would be absolutely
wonderful and it would certainly recognise the place that the
English cathedrals hold in the national heritage and you yourself
quoted that 45% of the Grade I listed buildings are in the church's
custody. The second thing to say is that there is some anxiety
amongst us about HLF, not only whether or not funds are going
to by siphoned off from HLF, which would be a great pity, but
also because of the way HLF has administered its funds for its
own perfectly good reasons. In relation to cathedrals they have
only granted money for new build, whereas of course what we really
know is that everybody comes to see the old build. That is not
true of parish churches and HLF has been able to help parish churches
but there is considerable anxiety, the technicalities of which
Paula would know much more than I about the way these two funds
relate to one another as resources for us and the way that the
rules are applied by either of them in relation to parish churches
on the one hand and to cathedrals on the other.
Ms Griffiths: In 1994 English
Heritage had their best year for church grants and were able to
offer £14 million. If you look at the value of that in real
terms now the amount given in church grants is £25 million
only with a contribution of the Heritage Lottery Fund, which as
Colin said, can and does give repair grants for parish churches,
but the total amount given has just about held even in real terms
and at the same time over the same period building costs have
soared by 70%. The real benefit is considerably lower. We do know
that many churches simply do not apply because the criterion is
so tight, but of those who do apply perhaps one in two gets a
grant. There are only a couple of hundred churches a year who
get anything at all and that is a major problem.
Mr Slee: Then we have to pay a
fortune to all the various expert consultants that are necessary
now by regulation and we have to pay VAT on all of that. Particularly
people applying for relatively small amounts of money will be
deterred simply from preparing the case to make the application.
Ms Griffiths: Having said that,
it is a major bonus that the Chancellor last week announced the
extension of the VAT scheme to professional fees and extended
the scheme for another three years which is a great help.
Mr Cooper: If you look at the
subsidy to cathedrals—I was looking at the York Railway
Museum website where they point out that their subsidy from central
government is £5.90 per visitor and they regard that as lower
than average—we estimate the subsidy per visitor to cathedrals
from the Government at 10 pence.[9]
The temptation is to think of cathedrals as somehow being part
of the Government; they are, of course, quite independent.
Canon Ainsworth: Picking up on
Colin's point, one of the things we would want to ask is that
in all new legislation and regulation it be carefully considered
how this will impact upon the churches and how the burden upon
those volunteers who have to implement all those detailed regulations
can be lessened.
Q181 Mr Hall: It is probably for
Mr Cooper to answer these questions. In evidence it has been said
that it is probably about £500 million for the repair bill
for cathedrals and churches in the Church of England. What would
the total bill be for the whole of the religious buildings for
worship across the UK, including Methodist, the Catholic Church,
mosques, Hindus, Sikhs, and all the others?
Mr Cooper: I do not know. I doubt
anyone does to be honest.
Q182 Mr Hall: In evidence you are
suggesting that the Government should pick up 50% of the tab of
this.
Mr Cooper: That was not my evidence.
If you look at historic buildings, listed buildings, you will
find—I do not have the figures in my head but they are written
down here—the Church of England has just over 12,000 listed
places of worship whereas non-conformist, Roman Catholic, synagogues
and mosques make up something of the order of two to three thousand
more. If you assume that costs are shared proportionally between
them, which may not be true because there are relatively few medieval
buildings in these other groups, we simply do not know, but assume
you could proportion up.
Q183 Mr Hall: It is a substantial
bill that you are asking the taxpayer to fund.
Ms Griffiths: They will not all
happen at once.
Q184 Mr Hall: It is still a substantial
bill.
Ms Griffiths: It is a substantial
bill. At the minute Church of England churches and cathedrals
probably spend £120 million a year.
Q185 Mr Hall: The point I am trying
to make is that you are asking the taxpayer to pick up a substantial
bill for the repairs.
Mr Brindley: But when you set
that in the context of the use of those buildings compared with
the use of other buildings which the taxpayer does fund you must
see it as a huge mismatch if you compare it with York Railway
Museum.
Q186 Mr Hall: I do not accept that
at all. I do not think churches are museums.
Ms Griffiths: No, they are not
museums. They are doing a lot of voluntary and community work
as well. If you costed the volunteer time and many of the social
functions which churches carry out that would have to be borne
by the state, there are considerable millions there from which
the community benefits.
Q187 Mr Hall: In your evidence you
have said that parish councils are able to fund churches but very
few seldom do.
Mr Cooper: As far as I can make
out, yes.
Q188 Mr Hall: Have you got a reason
for that?
Mr Cooper: No, it is a mystery
to me and is something I would like to know more about.
Q189 Mr Hall: Could it be that the
churches have not asked the parish councils for money?
Mr Slee: There is also a fear
of religion. My own local authority, not the parish council, but
the London Borough of Southwark will not fund anything because
they see us then as being a partisan threat to anything else that
they might wish to do, and in fact have said so.
Ms Griffiths: It comes back to
the level playing field argument.
Q190 Mr Hall: I have served on three
parish councils, albeit up until 1993, and over my 12 year tenure
in the parishes I have never once considered an application for
a grant from a church. It might be that you are not applying.
Mr Brindley: I have certainly
asked twice, once in Warwick and once in Portsmouth local authorities
and both times have been turned down.
Q191 Mr Hall: You say local authorities—do
you mean parish councils?
Mr Brindley: One was a parish
council and one was a city council.
Q192 Mr Hall: That is why they are
different. The parish council can spend its money on what it likes;
a city council is quite restrained.
Mr Cooper: I accept your point.
I have anecdotal evidence both ways. I simply do not have statistical
evidence or any decent survey evidence.
Q193 Mr Hall: Parish councils do
not have that much amount of money to spend. They have not got
huge pots of money. What are the restrictions that are placed
on alternative use of church interiors if they were to remain
a place of public worship?
Ms Griffiths: They are much more
flexible than many people believe. There have been an incredible
number of examples of very good and imaginative uses of church
buildings. Could I wave this at you, it is a booklet entitled
Building Faith in our Future, if you have not already seen
it—a copy went with the submissions but I can certainly
let you have more copies—this has lots of examples of very
positive things happening from cafés, cyber centres, to
use by schools, post offices. We are now in discussion with the
association which looks after village shops as well as post offices.
If a place of worship is in use obviously a use could not be completely
incompatible with its use as a consecrated building, but the legal
system is becoming far more flexible than it used to be about
the importance of bringing in other activities.
Canon Ainsworth: An astonishing
variety of things go on, not only in rural but in urban churches
as well. Picking up on the point about museums, although the church
is not a museum, one of the things we are saying quite firmly
is that there is a huge educational task goes on with school groups
visiting. In my own church we have eight different schools visit
two or three times a year, for cross-curricular visits, not just
RE work but for history, geography, maths, art and so on, and
there are huge opportunities there. Cathedrals are in a position
to employ education officers who can do that. Parish churches
find that very difficult but if we had something of the kind of
help that is available in the museum world to make the most of
those education experiences that really would be good.
Mr Slee: I hope no-one on this
Committee dreams that we let people come in with clipboards; clipboards
are banned. All the work that is done by cathedrals educationally
is by qualified teachers who work with teachers and do exactly
the work that is geared into their Key Stage work. The most popular
one in Southwark at the moment is the Victorian classroom experience
where they are all dressed in Victorian costume, where they are
treated as they would be in the Victorian classroom, so they have
to stand in the Song School and there is no sitting where they
do gymnastic exercises in the courtyard, where the Dean says he
would like to beat them all but the parents will not allow him
and the experience is a very comprehensive and popular event for
children. Because of the nature of the building you can recreate
a Victorian classroom. As it happens, the Song School is Victorian
so that is even better. That sort of work we are running attracts
7,000 children a year; St Albans I know gets 15,000 children a
year. This is very serious work. I see schools that are 80% Muslim
and I get thank you letters from Muslim parents. This is not wandering
around saying "Have you seen Shakespeare's monument?"
Mr Brindley: The proof of the
pudding is that we attract almost twice as many children as English
Heritage to their properties. That is how popular it is with the
schools.
Q194 Helen Southworth: The Church
Heritage Forum sees major potential to increase tourism in churches
and visitor attractions to areas and have an economic impact.
What do you see as the range of that opportunity and who do you
think should be developing it? You implied that DCMS should be
developing it but is this not something that you are best placed
to deal with?
Mr Brindley: In terms of opportunity,
for instance in Portsmouth we have gone up from about 20,000 visitors
to about 50,000 to 60,000 in three years and that has been by
putting a number of things in place and by cooperating closely
with other local attractions. It seems to me that that sort of
cooperation happens not just with local attractions but also with
the tourist boards, local authorities and national tourist boards.
There is still a huge potential for an increase in tourism and
the economic impact of that is very significant.
Canon Ainsworth: We are not asking
that the DCMS should organise that but simply recognise that there
is huge potential there which, as David has just said, has huge
spin-offs to the wider community.
Ms Griffiths: We are doing some
work with the help of a secondee from Visit Britain about developing
tourism within churches. It is much easier with cathedrals in
many ways because they are larger. As Trevor himself has identified,
the number of visitors to parish churches is huge. Very often
that experience is not necessarily well-prepared or well-coordinated.
There have been a number of initiatives which have shown that
with a little bit of careful work on how you welcome your visitors,
advertising what you have got, just telling people where you are,
you can perhaps double the number of visitors very easily over
a three-year period. This has been the experience in Yorkshire.
What it also did was increase the confidence of that local community
and that congregation. It is fair to say that it is never going
to be an economic panacea for the church, but what it does do
is bring a lot to the local economy if only in terms of petrol,
bed and breakfast, drinks in the pub, meals in the café,
and so there is a spin-off for the local community and it is about
building those links.
Q195 Helen Southworth: Have you identified
which of your premises, how many of your premises and where they
are that are visitor attractions?
Ms Griffiths: What do you mean
by "visitor attraction"? It can be anything from Canterbury
Cathedral to a small parish church. Every church is special, every
church is different; every church will have something.
Mr Brindley: You may have seen
two or three years ago Simon Jenkins published England's Thousand
Best Churches which, if you have not read it, you must see
because there is a fascinating description of a thousand really
beautiful places and people go around the country with that in
their car. I have seen them turn up with it and they say "Where
is such and such that Jenkins talked about?" The potential
there for doing that is huge. Potentially every one of our Grade
I listed churches is a significant tourist attraction. Potentially
every one of those Grade I and II* listed churches, and so on,
has the potential to pull more people into that locality and therefore
to create economic benefit in the locality.
Q196 Helen Southworth: Do they all
have access for visitors?
Mr Brindley: The cathedrals are
all open from dawn until dusk every day. A lot of the parish churches
are open every day. I do not know whether Paula knows what percentage?
Mr Slee: Are you asking about
DDA?
Q197 Helen Southworth: You are talking
about people being able to go in.
Mr Cooper: We know the average
figure is 55% of parish churches are open based on a sample of
20 counties. Rural Herefordshire, for example, manages to open
84%. Remember that every church that is open involves a churchwarden
or someone going along and opening it up in the morning and someone
going along and closing it at night, a purely voluntary activity.
On the DDA front, I sit on the Southwark DAC and I am seeing a
lot of disability access requests coming in. My impression is
that the Church is probably ahead of the game of anyone else on
that front.
Canon Ainsworth: In many communities
the church may well be the only listed building, the only building
of quality, both in landmark terms and in terms of what is inside.
Even if it is a relatively grotty building, in many communities
it is something that should be cherished and help local people
to appreciate what they have got on their doorstep and they use
it for a wide range of functions. Certainly the encouragement
to make churches accessible is coming all the time nationally
and from each diocese.
Ms Griffiths: It is very much
about a sense of pride and about community memory as well. If
you think of the number of family historians who are going around
tracing their great-great-grandparents who are constantly going
to churches and graveyards and in every case seeing something
of what this community has done, thought and suffered and dealt
with over the centuries. It is very powerful. That is not just
the Grade I buildings either.
Q198 Mr Sanders: What financial or
other outcomes do you hope to result from English Heritage's "Inspired!"
programme?
Ms Griffiths: English Heritage
is preaching very similar messages to the ones we have done in
Building Faith in our Future: that churches can do a tremendous
amount and that they are under-supported. I would hope that with
the Inspired! Campaign, building on the work we have already done
that, yes, perhaps the Government would recognise that there was
need for more financial support for church buildings to maintain
them and keep them open. It is also a question, which is one we
are already addressing, of what we might call `building capacity'
and making sure that there was good practice and advice spread
to parishes which we centrally are trying to do with websites
and advice to dioceses and parishes.
Q199 Mr Sanders: Are you confident
that English Heritage achieves an appropriate balance between
preserving church fabric and enabling adaptation for community
use?
Mr Brindley: Certainly in my experience
that is true. I chair Portsmouth Advisory Committee. We have very
good working relationships with English Heritage and they ask
us difficult but proper questions and always in conversation with
them they do have a very broad and realistic understanding that
we are dealing with sensitive historic buildings, but we are also
dealing with buildings which are in use which are not museums
and buildings which need to evolve to serve the needs of the local
community and the worshipping community. Our experience has always
been that English Heritage have been very positive, supportive
and putting lots of very good ideas to that.
Ms Griffiths: There has been quite
a shift, not only within English Heritage, but within the whole
of the amenity world over the past 15 years, about recognising
that they want to preserve these buildings, we want to preserve
these buildings and keep them going, but the best way of keeping
a building going is for it to be used, loved and maintained and
sometimes that is going to need some sensitive adaptation to enable
that. Yes, of course, you have to think about what "sensitive
adaptation" means; yes, you have to think about what the
building will let you do, but there is usually a way forward with
good consultation and good will on both sides and increasingly
that is happening. If English Heritage do have a bad reputation
it is very often perhaps on the basis of an old story from 10
years ago and the rumour has spread like wildfire, or it is about
them not being called into consultation at the earliest stage
when everybody can pull together and think about the problems
and the way forward.
Canon Ainsworth: It is when they
are under pressure and under-resourced that the problems come.
9 Footnote by Witness: This is the direct subsidy
via English Heritage repair grants. Back
| 
