Written evidence submitted by Diocese of Chichester
I am responding as Senior Church Buildings Officer at the (Anglican) Diocese of Chichester, which covers East and West Sussex and has 466 open church buildings and approximately 30 closed church buildings. Of 466 open church buildings, approximately 75% are listed, including 181 listed at Grade I, 94 at Grade II*, and 76 at Grade II. This constitutes a large collection on highly significant historic buildings.
1. What are the most significant challenges facing owners and operators of built heritage assets, and how are they affecting what those sites can offer?
The most significant challenges facing parishes in caring for church buildings include:
From the diocesan perspective, the issues include:
Church buildings play a major role in supporting communities by organising and hosting community services and activities, including:
These services are particularly important to local communities, given the pressure on Local Authority budgets and the reduction in the community services that they fund. For churches to continue to provide these services for their congregations and communities, they need to be supported in maintaining and repairing their church buildings.
What interventions are needed to prevent the managed decline of heritage assets on publicly-owned land?
Generally church buildings are on church owned land.
Local Authorities should be encouraged to consider selling or leasing chapels in civic cemeteries – a large number of these are currently derelict across the country.
What can the Government do to make it easier for communities or local businesses to take ownership of historic buildings?
The current planning legislation around listed buildings makes it difficult to adapt churches for new uses. A more pragmatic approach to closed churches from Local Planning Authorities would make it easier to find a new use. The current processes make it very time-consuming and difficult to get planning permission for conversion and change of use, and buildings tend to deteriorate quickly once they have been closed.
The Government could also consider a scheme to incentivise the reuse of a building. At present, it tends to be cheaper to build a purpose-built building rather than adapting a historic building. A scheme that offered financial incentives to take on a historic building would make converting a derelict historic building a more attractive option. There are thousands of closed churches and industrial buildings that could benefit from such a scheme.
2. How effective are the current funding and finance models for built heritage?
Not very effective. There are a wide range of grants available for listed church buildings but they are extremely competitive and there is not enough funding to go around. Large grants from organisations like the National Lottery Heritage Fund come with expectations that the repairs will be accompanied by a range of outcomes, included heritage events and activities that are not always achievable when historic churches are in rural areas and cared for by a small congregation.
There is a particular lack of funding for urgent repairs – Historic England used to have a fund from which they could make grants for urgent repairs to churches and the loss of this funding has left a gap. In reality, it takes a minimum of 6-12 months to plan an NLHF application so it is not suitable for urgent repairs.
There is also very little funding available for buildings that are not listed but are located in a Conservation Area, have been added to a Local List, and/or have been identified by the Local Planning Authority as Non-Designated Heritage Assets. These buildings often date from the post-war period and may well be listed if they survive long enough but are under threat because they have now reached the point where significant repairs are needed, and they are not eligible for heritage grants.
What should long-term public funding for the sector look like?
Historic England should have funds from the government to allocate in grant funding, as in other European countries like France or Germany. It is not appropriate that funding repairs to historic buildings has been left entirely in the hands of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a range of other privately funded charitable trusts. At present, the government is contributing nothing except the LPW grant scheme (which refunds the VAT paid on repairs to listed churches), the continuance of which has still not been confirmed beyond March 2025.
The government should also either guarantee the future of the LPW grant scheme or make repairs to listed churches zero-rated, so that churches do not have to pay the VAT and then claim it back.
In the long term, if church attendance continues to decline at the current rate, it is unlikely that the Church of England will be able to continue to maintain and repair the 12,000 listed buildings in its care and the rate of closure is likely to increase rapidly over the next couple of decades. At the moment, churches that are highly listed and are deemed too significant to adapt or sub-divide tend to be vested in one of two small charities: the Friends of Friendless Churches and the Churches Conservation Trust. However, these charities are small and have very limited resources. At some stage, it seems likely that the state will need to take over caring for some of the most significant buildings, to ensure that they are preserved for the future.
3. What role does built heritage play in the regeneration of local areas and in contributing to economic growth and community identity?
As noted under Question 1, churches play a major role in supporting communities by organising and hosting community services and activities, including food banks, support for the elderly and sick, parent and toddler groups, coffee mornings, bereavement support, youth groups, community gardens, affordable space that can be hired by groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and for antenatal classes and community groups. These services are particularly important in rural areas where there is often no other public building in the village, and in urban settings where churches can play an important role in providing services, creating community identity and supporting societal cohesion.
How can heritage buildings be supported to increase energy efficiency and contribute to the Government’s net zero targets?
The Church of England has committed to reducing is carbon emissions and is encouraging parishes to work towards Net Zero. However, while many parishes are keen and are attempting to play their part in this, there is very little funding for works to improve energy efficiency in churches. Major funders do not generally fund heating and lighting projects, and the move from oil or gas-based heating systems to a more environmentally friendly heating system is often prohibitively expensive. It would be helpful if the Government could offer grants for which churches and other heritage buildings are eligible (the criteria attached to the recent VCSE scheme excluded the majority of church buildings – although several churches in this diocese made applications, none were successful).
4. What are the financial, regulatory and practical barriers to preserving built heritage?
The costs involved in preserving built heritage and the lack of grant funding makes it prohibitively expensive.
There is also currently no incentive to adapt derelict historic buildings for reuse and the costs involved mean that developers generally choose to build on green field sites rather than reusing hic buildings. A government scheme to encourage the reuse of historic buildings could help overcome this issue.
The complexity of the planning system and the length of time it takes to deal with applications puts people off trying to adapt historic buildings for reuse. For example, there are several closed historic churches in Brighton and Hove, which could be repurposed, but the costs and difficulties involved in adapting them for reuse means that they tend to be left closed for years at a time, leading to the deterioration of the fabric before a new use is found.
Since the pandemic, it has become considerably more difficult to speak to Conservation Officers and get informal advice. There seems to be a lack of Conservation Officers, probably due to the low salaries offered by Local Planning Authorities, and some LPAs have also chosen to outsource conservation advice to external consultancies. This makes it more difficult to build relationships and to get informal advice without submitting an expensive and time-consuming pre-application planning application. It also means that the conservation advice comes from a consultancy with little understanding of the local architecture and heritage.
What policy changes are needed to make restoring historic buildings easier and less expensive?
There should be a more pragmatic approach to converting derelict historic buildings for reuse. Proposals to convert closed churches for new uses are often held up in the planning system for years and are frequently turned down, as the Local Planning Authority insist that a space should not be sub-divided. This is short-sighted because the buildings deteriorate more quickly. Any use is better than leaving a building derelict for long periods of time.
Policy changes to ensure that Local Planning Authorities deal with planning applications within a reasonable timeframe would be helpful. The timescales involved in processing planning applications seem to have increased significantly since the pandemic, particularly for any applications that are complex, including those involving the reuse of historic buildings. The planning application for the conversion of one closed church has been with the Local Planning Authority for over 3 years.
5. What policies would ensure the UK workforce has the right skills to maintain our heritage assets?
It is increasingly difficult to find skilled contractors in areas like heritage roofing, thatching, flintwork, stonemasonry and stained-glass repair. It would be helpful to encourage more apprenticeships and vocational training in crafts and heritage building skills. The apprenticeship scheme organised by Historic England is helpful but relatively small.
There is also an urgent need to improve pay in the heritage sector. The salaries offered by Historic England and Local Authorities has not kept up with inflation over the past decade and salaries are now so low that it discourages qualified applicants from applying for jobs with Historic England or as Conservation Officers. People tend to do these roles for a few years and then go into the private sector.