Written evidence submitted by Anthony Grimshaw Associates

DCMS call for evidence regarding heritage buildings – lack of grant funding for churches

We are a Conservation Accredited Architectural practice working in the North of England on church repair projects and have noticed a marked decline in the amount of grant funding churches are able to access over the last few years.

It is significant to us that the DCMS based their decision to limit VAT reclaims to £25,000 per year on previous LPW Grant Scheme data, which indicated that 94% of claims were under this amount.  This means that 94% of churches are spending less than £123,000 per year on repairs and other work. 

It proves how little urgent repair work is actually getting done to each church.  This is nowhere near enough to address the backlog of urgent repairs that now exists.

The reason is because grant funding for repairs (on which churches rely) is simply no longer available.

It is a shocking statistic when our own records show that in 2016 (just before the Heritage Lottery Fund ringfenced grants for places of worship scheme ended) we helped churches to obtain £1,198,500 in grant aid in a single year, all for urgent repairs.  With partnership funding, the actual amounts spent were more.  Each church would have reclaimed VAT of around twice the current LPW grant limit.

We are one small architectural practice based in the North of England and these grants represented funding for just 5 individual churches.  The average grant for each church (in 2016) was £250,000.  Previous years were similar. 

Churches in our area are now closing as they cannot afford to pay for their urgent repairs.  19 churches are earmarked for potential closure in Wigan alone, one being the Medieval Parish Church.

This is the evidence we have, above any other, of the parlous state of church funding for urgent repairs.

The lack of suitable grant funding is putting the heritage of our historic listed churches at terminal risk.

A dedicated ringfenced government funded repair grant scheme is desperately needed if our religious heritage buildings are to be saved.

Rachel Grimshaw M.A.

Anthony Grimshaw Associates LLP

Website: anthonygrimshawassociates.co.uk

31 January 2025