Memorandum submitted by the Historic Chapels
Trust
The Historic Chapels Trust was formed in 1993
to take into ownership redundant chapels of outstanding quality
in England ie of grade I or II* quality, and to preserve, repair
and maintain them for public benefit and for posterity. HCT's
remit embraces mainly Nonconformist chapels and RC churches but
also extends to synagogues and buildings of other faiths with
the exception of former parish churches which are eligible for
vesting in the Churches Conservation Trust.
HCT so far has 17 chapels in its ownership.
These are listed in our Appendix with notes on the benefits of
our acquisition, repair, regeneration and access programmes. All
chapels are open to the public at any reasonable time. HCT has
a good record of introducing disabled access to its buildings.
Ten of HCT's chapels have been repaired and
fully regenerated. Schemes are in preparation for all the others.
HCT is considering additional acquisitions provided the buildings
meet our criteria of being of outstanding quality and genuinely
redundant for regular worship.
From the outset, HCT always felt strongly that
chapels should continue to be used for a range of suitable community
activities such as concerts, exhibitions, conferences, lectures
etc and other events compatible with their conservation, as well
as for occasional services of worship which are important for
promoting understanding of their history. This policy preceded
the inception of the Heritage Lottery Fund and many current government
initiatives encouraging the reuse and regeneration of redundant
historic buildings. HCT has been a pioneer in this field.
HCT has always been willing to take on "difficult"
and "problem" buildings including semi-derelict but
important chapels at risk, such as Salem Chapel, Devon, and the
Dissenters' Chapel in Kensal Green Cemetery, London.
HCT has tackled chapels in remote rural locations
and chapels off the beaten track eg Biddlestone RC Chapel in Northumberland
National Park, Farfield Friends Meeting House, West Yorkshire
and Penrose Methodist Chapel in Cornwall.
HCT has acquired several very large chapels
including Bethesda Methodist Chapel in Stoke on Trent which was
featured in the BBC 2 Restoration series, Todmorden Unitarian
Church in West Yorkshire—the size of a cathedral with a
lodge and two extensive burial grounds, Umberslade Baptist Church
in Warwickshire and the Votive Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in
Blackpool.
HCT owns several chapels in rundown/reviving
urban areas such as St George's German Lutheran Church in the
London Borough of Tower Hamlets and Wallasey Memorial Unitarian
Church on Merseyside. Many of its chapels have precious but inflexible
interiors which need to be kept intact because that is the primary
reason for retaining the building. This has not deterred us in
our determination to regenerate these buildings.
Whenever HCT acquires a chapel, it calls a public
meeting, open to all, to discuss plans for the building and to
form a local group of volunteers who will be able to organise
suitable events and occasional services of worship. These arrangements
have worked extremely well. Our very successful committee for
Walpole Old Chapel, in rural north Suffolk, celebrates its 10th
Anniversary this year as will our committee for Todmorden Unitarian
Church.
In addition, HCT hires out its buildings on
a one off basis for private receptions, commercial book launches,
AGM's etc but also has a number of tenancy/leasehold arrangements
for the more permanent use of some chapels and their ancillary
accommodation. As examples, the church hall at Wallasey Memorial
Unitarian Church is occupied by Wallasey School of Ballet and
the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery use the Dissenters' Chapel
and its adjacent exhibition space for a range of activities.
HCT's repair and conservation programmes are
all-embracing and include ancillary buildings, burial grounds,
planting, monuments and all chapel contents. Into this latter
category fall memorials, organs, paintings, embroideries, clocks
and other precious items. All are repaired where this is necessary
to the highest modern conservation standards, as of course are
the chapels and churches themselves.
Wherever it is possible and appropriate to extend
the public enjoyment and use of our chapels, we install modern
heating and lighting systems along with kitchens and lavatories.
HCT's activities were reviewed very satisfactorily by English
Heritage in 2002.
When HCT was formed its funding was expected
to be similar to that of the Churches Conservation Trust which
receives 70% funding from DCMS, 30% from the Church of England
and appeals for donations in addition.
Right from the start however, HCT's funding
arrangements were very different. In broad terms, over 13 years,
HCT has raised one third of its funding from English Heritage,
one third from the Heritage Lottery Fund (since its foundation)
and has raised one third itself—a total of £4.5 m.
HCT has been in receipt of fourteen Heritage Lottery grants.
HCT has no funds of its own and raises its share
of finance from grant giving trusts, private individuals, regular
subscribers, local authorities, the Landfill Site Tax Credit Scheme,
the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme and regeneration bodies
such as City Challenge. HCT has to fund acquisition costs, insurance
premiums, security costs and maintenance costs in addition to
repairs, upgrading and its office overheads.
HCT feels it has made a praiseworthy effort
in tackling the problem of redundant chapels of the highest quality
at reasonable cost while employing a tiny staff. It has enabled
large numbers of people—beyond the reach of any denomination—to
enjoy its chapels by attending events or simply by paying visits.
HCT has preserved the historic architecture and character of all
its chapels without removing historic features and without resorting
to heavy going "conversion" schemes. Over 13 years HCT
has won 10 architectural awards for its buildings including a
Europa Nostra Award for the Dissenters' Chapel in 1997.
All in all HCT has paid its way and its chapels,
once put into a good state of repair, usually generate sufficient
money from events and donations to pay for basic future maintenance
plus some "improvements".
HCT has developed good relations with all its
funding organisations over the years and occasionally received
unsolicited offers of help. Without the funds we receive from
English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund, it would not be
possible to operate with the speed or on the scale we now can
or plan with any confidence about the future. Therefore we are
anxious that both bodies flourish.
Without HCT's intervention, it is clear that
many historic chapels of great significance would have suffered
demolition, inappropriate conversion, drastic alteration or the
removal of important fittings and fixtures. HCT has worked hard
to reverse this trend in the wake of shocking losses of buildings
of great architectural and historic significance which occurred
up until the early 1990's. HCT has found widespread support for
its activities, from national bodies and at the grassroots. In
addition, on many occasions it has acted as a catalyst for other
organisations to retain and regenerate redundant chapels in a
sympathetic manner. Several trusts have been formed on the model
of HCT including those in Scotland and Wales.
It is against this background that HCT offers
its comments to the Select Committee on the Heritage. We would
be happy to give oral evidence if that would assist the committee
and will welcome committee members either as a group or individually
to visit some of our chapels. St George's near Liverpool Street
station and the Dissenters' Chapel close to Kensal Green tube
station would be convenient in London. Please contact us if we
can help in this way.
Priorities for the forthcoming Heritage White
Paper
— HCT is generally supportive of the
conclusions of the Heritage Protection Review (subject to its
previous submissions to DCMS etc.)
— HCT requests that adequate funding
be made available to English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery
Fund for the repair of Heritage which has been identified as being
"at risk"', without imposing unduly onerous obligations
to meet other criteria in detail before funds can be agreed. Such
obligations can cause delay and add to cost and can be left to
later stages. It is doubtful whether the repair of the Dissenters'
Chapel in Kensal Green Cemetery would ever have met current criteria
for repair and upgrading schemes but its revival has been a resounding
success, beyond anyone's wildest dreams.
— The current percentage funding of
Lottery income allocated to the Heritage Lottery Fund should be
retained. As many recent surveys show, heritage is a popular cause
among all groups and the need for and demand for funding remains
strong, especially for churches and chapels and other places of
worship.
— Cooperation across Government departments
should be built-in to all policies affecting the historic environment.
Assessing the effect on the Heritage of new programmes must be
a key element. There has to be proper recognition of the role
that "heritage" initiatives can play in many Government
schemes.
— HCT supports the proposed revision
of the listing and scheduling procedures for historic buildings.
This will be welcomed provided the process does not become bureaucratic
and that the suggested lengthy "statements of significance"
do not become counterproductive and expensive in staff time. The
issue of the underlisting and undergrading of historic chapels
must become a priority for review and "group value"
in chapels should be adequately recognised. The best of the present-day
protections must not be lost in the redrafting exercise and the
proposed simplification of procedures. HCT will welcome worthwhile
suggestions for the rationalisation of piecemeal elements in the
current system.
— There should be an increased level
of protection for buildings in conservation areas where historic
chapels and churches are often located. HCT seeks clarification
of the wording in various Acts and associated guidance which appears
to promote redevelopment, as opposed to conservation, and results
in the steady erosion of features that contribute to the character
of many conservation areas.
— Local authorities should be encouraged
to make far greater use of Urgent Works Notices, Repairs Notices
etc (although HCT appreciates these are rarely used in connection
with religious organisations that own places of worship).
The remit and effectiveness of DCMS
— HCT is pleased to note that a number
of DCMS staff now specifically cover aspects of the heritage and
are familiarising themselves with the issues. The recent DCMS
lunch with Minister David Lammy on the Ecclesiastical Heritage
was a welcome initiative and provided the opportunity for a genuine
airing of views.
— HCT would like heritage issues to
be aired frequently in this way and for the DCMS to give heritage
a higher profile for its own sake without heritage policy been
seen as an adjunct to other government initiatives.
— HCT is concerned that Heritage seems
to be subject to constant investigation at official level, as
it there was "something wrong with it". The flow of
consultation documents and initiatives has been very marked over
the last few years. We feel that Heritage should been seen as
part and parcel of official aims in the field of education, urban
and rural regeneration, employment, tourism etc. Often this is
not reflected in the general government stance. The profile of
heritage reflected in current official funding levels is low.
The remit and effectiveness of English Heritage
— English Heritage is currently hampered
by the decline in its year on year grant in aid from government,
both in terms of its own self-confidence and capacity and the
loss of its professional staff. Although HCT has been fortunate
in raising substantial sums outside English Heritage, its has
no doubt that English Heritage's core funding of HCT has helped
to build HCT as a credible organisation in the eyes of others.
— It is arguable that government support
for "building capacity" among voluntary groups and others
is being nullified by serious reductions in English Heritage's
grant and technical support. Moreover English Heritage grants
and other assistance can benefit all types of owners, not just
the voluntary, non-profit or charitable bodies with which the
Heritage Lottery Fund is involved.
— English Heritage was instituted as
a pro-active, research orientated, policy-making organisation.
It can be enterprising and experimental but in recent years it
appears to have been more and more forced to lose its independence
and to follow established government credos. It should be allowed
greater independence once again. Government should step back and
stop trying to shoehorn English Heritage into other agendas.
The balance between heritage and development needs
in planning policy
— There has been an underlying assumption
in government policy over several decades, to a greater or lesser
degree, that the road to progress and prosperity lies in redevelopment,
not in the retention, repair and regeneration of worthwhile historic
structures. Yet there is no real evidence that redevelopment is
automatically more economically advantageous or socially desirable.
Often redevelopment is costly in financial terms, disruptive overall,
and a cause of blight—often years of blight—and controversy.
Repair and regeneration is usually possible if its protagonists
are given a chance. Often commercial developers display a woeful
poverty of imagination in identifying new uses for historic buildings
and lack the right skills and knowledge, although they have the
means to acquire them and advice (often free) is readily available.
The government through its agencies, especially regional development
authorities, should promote the value of heritage and heritage-
orientated development more strenuously and be seen to lose its
current love affair with, for example, "tall buildings"
for the sake of them. Ill considered commercial and other types
of development have often caused redundancies and disuse among
historic churches and chapels which HCT is attempting to remedy.
Access to heritage and the position of heritage
as a cultural aspect in the community
— HCT's chapels are open to the public
at reasonable times on application to its local keyholders. Experimentally,
two chapels are left unlocked and open. This experiment is proving
successful, subject to frequent spot checks. Our burial grounds
are open to visitors at all times and can provide, along with
the chapels themselves, an educational tool for all age groups
and people of all backgrounds. Our chapels are situated in rural
and urban locations including poor inner city areas. HCT has always
found that its efforts have been welcomed locally and we have
had little difficulty in identifying volunteers, keyholders and
others to watch over our chapels and to contribute to their regeneration.
— By providing visitor access, histories
and guides to our chapels and suitable events, HCT feels it is
offering to local communities a good return on the tax payers'
money received from English Heritage and players money received
through the HLF. Once our projects are complete, we have never
received any criticism—except that it all takes so long!
By way of example, hundreds of people pass through the Dissenters'
Chapel in Kensal Green Cemetery every year and the recent carol
concert at Walpole Old Chapel in Suffolk attracted 180 people—the
maximum the chapel will hold. HCT can offer many examples of this
type of popularity.
Funding for English Heritage
— HCT is deeply concerned about the
continuing reduction in government funding for English Heritage.
This is drastically reducing English Heritage's capacity for grant
making across all buildings etc. in its remit. In turn this increases
pressure on HLF resources. HCT is constantly shocked by the appalling
condition of some of the highly graded historic chapels, which
it takes into ownership. Our experience underlines the need for
adequate funding for English Heritage in addition to the welcome
introduction of the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme from
which HCT benefits. Even medium-size chapels frequently require
half to three quarters of a million pounds to be spent on them.
It is an arduous lengthy enterprise to garner the funds during
which time chapels deteriorate and repair costs rise. English
Heritage's pump priming money is absolutely vital in this exercise.
The 2012 Olympics in London
— There is a general concern, shared
by all heritage bodies, that the high spending required to mount
the Olympic Games to be met out of the budget of the very small
DCMS, will have a detrimental effect on the general level of funding
available to the heritage. This cannot be allowed to happen. It
should be remembered that many people who visit the Olympic Games
will also be travelling around the country to view its historic
places. It is absolutely vital that a sensible amount of money
is made available to English Heritage and continues to be available
to the Heritage Lottery Fund to repair and upgrade the historic
physical assets of the country in all their multiplicity. A glance
at the "buildings at risk" list, produced by English
Heritage, indicates the scale of the problem but there is a general
concern about under-repair and lack of maintenance. Much of this
cannot be met by owners because of the high costs of looking after
an historic structure.
The Heritage Lottery Fund
— There is an equal anxiety that proposals
about the future of the Heritage Lottery Fund may result in a
reduction of resources available to HLF to disperse. HCT deplores
this as the need for funding is well demonstrated and the cause
is popular. Moreover HLF is under pressure from applicants who
would formerly have received a higher percentage of grant aid
from English Heritage. HCT is responding in detail to HLF's current
consultation exercise.
— On the specific issue of balances,
it should be emphasised that historic projects take an inordinate
length of time to mature and for funding to be drawn down. It
is not easy for purely voluntary bodies, with which HLF deals
exclusively, to identify match funding and assemble professional
packages quickly. Even a professional body such as HCT took several
years to use up the initial grant offered for Todmorden Unitarian
Church, but we completed the work in the end. If HCT's balance
had been redirected elsewhere, then the building would still be
unusable!
The roles and responsibilities of English Heritage
and the Heritage Lottery Fund
— HCT is broadly happy with the statutory
roles and responsibilities of English Heritage and the Heritage
Lottery Fund, although it feels that English Heritage would benefit
from less direction by government and more freedom to address
issues as it sees fit. English Heritage could at the same time
improve its public profile and examine its reputation for being
"difficult" and pedantic. HLF might examine its record
in supporting what many people consider to be tangential, questionable
projects in its efforts to reach the grassroots. It can be overbureaucratic
in its procedures and sometimes takes its eye off its main reason
for supporting heritage projects.
The roles and responsibilities of local authorities
— Local authorities play a central
role in dealing with applications for works and grants to grade
II buildings and over the designation and regulation of works
within conservation areas. Regrettably, much of this work is demonstrably
underfunded and conservation work does not enjoy a sufficiently
high status in some places. Many local authorities achieve good
levels of care but others are weak and vacillating. Several recent
reports have examined this problem in detail including —Conservation
Provision in England produced by Oxford Brookes University.
The roles and responsibilities of charities
— Many charities undertake extensive
good work in various aspects of the heritage and it would be helpful
if further reliefs could be offered by the government to charitable
giving in general. HCT is dependent for 1/3 of its funding from
the private, voluntary sector. Specifically it would help owners
of churches and chapels if the Listed Places of Worship Scheme
could be extended to churchyards and that the scheme could be
extended in perpetuity, perhaps extended to other types of listed
buildings or owners. There is a current campaign in Europe to
bring this into effect. Heritage Link and Europa Nostra are co-ordinating
these efforts. The vexed question of VAT imposed on all charities
should be the subject of a government review. Consideration should
be given to a system of "flat VAT" equalising the burden
on repairs and new build/alterations.
— HCT, along with a few other organisations,
benefits from a provision in the Charities Act which allows it
to acquire its chapels "for less than full consideration".
We have found this provision to be very helpful as denominations
are often willing to offer their buildings to an organisation
such as HCT whereas in other cases, they might have to market
a property openly and sell to less attractive new owners. Perhaps
this provision could be extended more widely?
The inadequate supply of professionals
— As a body which actively repairs
historic buildings it is quite obvious that there is inadequate
supply of all professionals with conservation skills ranging from
conservation architects to monument restorers, heating engineers
and needlework experts. This means that many jobs have to wait
and that costs increase over time. It is often very difficult
to budget when work will take place over an enormous period. At
the same time it is clear that many young people would like to
come into the field but opportunities to train seem to be limited
and expensive. The field also suffers from relatively low levels
of pay. Conservation expertise can be spread by conferences, seminars
and courses. More of these should be aimed at property developers
and others. Nevertheless, some aspects of building conservation
are very technical and need intensive study and know-how.
— It will be essential to train many
new conservation officers to implement the new Heritage Protection
procedures.
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