Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Churches Conservation Trust
Thank you for giving the Churches Conservation
Trust the opportunity to appear before your Committee. I promised
to write to you reflecting on the evidence that I heard during
the day as it related to the CCT.
With 45% of all Grade I buildings, the Church
of England is the largest player in the stewardship of what is
defined as the outstanding part of our built heritage. The Government
supports all churches and not only Anglican ones in the following
ways:
— VAT rebates on repairs to "Listed
Places of Worship" which value at approximately £6 million
a year.
— Grants from English Heritage of £28.3
million towards church repairs each year.
In addition Government contributes to the CCT
which is responsible for those redundant churches judged to be
outstanding. Currently the Trust's total Grant in Aid totals £4.285
million, of which 70% is from taxpayers and 30% from the Church
Commissioners. The CCT was established in 1969 following the widespread
redundancy of parish churches many of whom were of outstanding
historic value and architectural beauty. Currently the Trust has
over 335 churches in its care.
From our State/Church budget we try to maintain
this estate to a level worthy of the quality of the buildings,
run an expanding educational programme and meet the growing targets
for visitor numbers, which reached 1.2 million last year and are
set to increase by 3% per year. We also have to repair and conserve
three to four churches newly vested with us each year. Over the
last two years we have spent £2.2 million on these new vestings.
We do not now have the funds to repair and conserve to the level
at which we once could. Nor can we carry out all the urgent repair
work to our existing estate.
For example, this year we have had to take two
major repair projects out of our programme because of the disproportionate
drain they would represent on our resources. They are:
— Milton Mausoleum, Nottinghamshire:
£680,000 of repairs are needed to make this remote grade
1 church structurally sound and presentable to visitors. It is
effectively being mothballed during 2006-09.
— Avon Dassett St John the Baptist,
Warwickshire: the stonework on the tower of this imposing Victorian
village church requires major work to the tune of £728,000.
During 2006-09 we will be able to afford only holding repairs.
We are actively seeking alternative sources
of funds but even if we meet with unexpected success here we will
not have a budget which enables us to carry out our functions
to a standard that we were able to achieve even 10 years ago.
Our central budget has been cut in real terms by 5% over a six-year
period up to 2009.
Some of the churches vested with us are in regeneration
areas and we are anxious to play an active and imaginative role
here. Our regeneration of St Paul's Bristol was in large part
funded by the HLF but, even so, we needed to put over £1m
of our own resources to finance this project. There are similar
regeneration projects we wish to undertake at St James Toxteth
and Holy Trinity Sunderland, to name but two examples, but we
do not have the reserves to part finance a project on the Bristol
scale.
We would therefore ask the Select Committee
to consider recommending that:
1. The DCMS ensures that the Trust has a
specific additional £1 million regeneration budget to be
used as a pump-priming fund for successive new community use projects
and for this sum to be regularly topped up from the Department.
2. To fund so as to establish what we have
called an "ambulance service" for historic church buildings.
A multi-professional team would combine help with basic repairs
such as cleaning gutters using specialist portable scaffolding,
with hands-on assistance with fundraising, use-seeking and project
management. Such an initiative will prevent ageing and sometimes
dwindling congregations who can no longer carry out these basic
tasks, giving up and pushing their churches towards the more expensive
option of redundancy and vesting.
3. The CCT grant is increased and maintained
in real terms with part of the grant indexed to the number of
new churches vested in the Trust.
These are small sums even in DCMS budget terms
but they would amount to a significant contribution to maintaining
those of Britain's redundant churches which are of outstanding
merit, would encourage the Trust in its regeneration and community
development programme while simultaneously maintaining the Trust's
portfolio of buildings as active repositories of the country's
history, faith and culture.
3 March 2006
| 
