General Synod Financing the Churches Conservation Trust |
Fellow members of Synod, I beg to move that “The Payments to the Churches Conservation Trust Order 2008” be approved.
When we debated the current funding order in 2005, the Bishop of Norwich remarked that he was increasingly able to see churches vested in the Conservation Trust as “allies in mission and ministry instead of being icons of Christian failure”. Experience of the imaginative way the Trust has been discharging its responsibilities over the past three years has strengthened this view.
Speaking as acting Chairman of the Church Commissioners and also Chairman of the Church Buildings Division I have an opportunity to study the work of the Trust in detail and I should like to pay tribute to Crispin Truman its Chief Executive and to successive Chairs, Frank Field and now Lloyd Grossman for the energy and entrepreneurial gumption they have shown.
The Churches Conservation trust has in its keeping 341 churches closed for regular public worship. These are churches of high heritage significance for which no appropriate alternative use has been found. Without the Trust, the Church would be entirely liable for the upkeep of these buildings.
The churches remain consecrated and available for occasional worship. Last year 705 services were held, part of a rising trend which reflects strengthening relations with local parishes and incumbents. Recently the Trust organised a day conference for incumbents whose parishes included a Trust church. The purpose was to develop ways in which the nation wide expertise of the Trust could assist parish communities make the best use of the kind of opportunities which featured in our previous debate on Sacred Britain.
The Trust also offers the opportunity of returning churches to full parish use if changing demography and development warrant such a reversal. There is an example in Liverpool where the Diocese is planning to re-occupy a large city centre church which was closed and vested in the Trust in the 1970’s.
Other possibilities of restoration to parish use are being explored.
Over 1.5 million visitors came to Trust churches last year including nearly three hundred educational groups. This level of interest has resulted from the success of the Trust’s work in interpreting the buildings in their care to provide a better understanding the Christian history of our nation. Please visit the Trust’s web site and view the interactive educational pages or download the audio guides to particular churches. Also in partnership with English heritage the Trust has produced the highly regarded educational resource pack for schools – Exploring Churches.
All this work is a pioneering contribution to the task which faces us all to present our churches better so that they serve our mission agenda.
An encouraging example of what can be done can be seen in the Trust’s South Yorkshire project centred on five churches in the Yorkshire coal field. Until recently they were largely unused and unvisited but two years ago the CCT raised £50,000 from three grant making trusts to finance a two year project to stimulate local interest and encourage events to bring the buildings back to life. A half time worker opened the buildings up. Visitor number quadrupled in the first year; volunteers were recruited and local schools were involved in visits and exhibitions.
All this has been achieved despite the fact that core funding of the Trust has been flat since 2001 although as you have seen from your papers a small increase has been announced recently at the conclusion of the spending round. New work has required vigorous fundraising. Synod is not being asked to support a grant to a supine pensionary.
The Funding Order and the accompanying paper GS1695X sets out the financial arrangements. The Church contributes 30% to the Trust’s core costs and the State puts in 70%. The funding required from the Church Commissioners over the next three years will be not more than £4.16 million depending on the level of State support.
That is about £1.4 million p.a. or about £4,000 each year on each of the Trust’s churches. Crucially this gives the Church and not the State the right to decide which churches should be vested in the Trust. The current budget allows for 3 or 4 new vestings each year.
The Church’s share is met from two sources. First there is the one third of the sale proceeds of closed church buildings which comes to the Commissioners. The other two thirds of course stays in the Dioceses. The second source is the Church Commissioners’ General Fund.
Recent sale proceeds have been buoyant and in the current funding period about £2.5 million of the church’s share has come from sales with the balance of £1.4 million coming from the General Fund. Property values are of course bound to be affected in the current economic turbulence and we should not assume that so large a proportion will be met from sales in the next triennium.
I believe in conclusion that the Churches Conservation trust is a valuable partner at local and national level. The Church-State 30-70% funding formula is part of the complex set of arrangements which operate in this aspect of our life as a Church.
I have often said that we are in financial terms the most disestablished church in Europe and that there is an asymmetrical relationship between ourselves and public authority in respect of our custodianship of such a significant community asset as the Cathedrals and Churches of our land. There is much to be done and we should not relax our efforts but the CCT is a good example of a working partnership and I hope that Synod will support the proposals contained in GS1695.
