Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, has called upon the government to make its Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme permanent, saying that the grant had acted as a “lifeline” to churches.
The grant was first introduced 20 years ago by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown, and covers the cost of VAT on church repairs that cost over £1,000.
Cottrell was speaking at the Great Expectations conference at the Victoria and Albert Museum about the current state of Britain’s historic church buildings and what can be done to preserve them.
A survey earlier this year by the National Churches Trust suggested that as many as 2,000 churches in Britain could close down in the next five years, with rural areas most affected.
Speaking at the conference, Cottrell argued that churches are not just places of worship, but community centres that provide a host of benefits, including social action projects, cultural and artistic events or even just simple meeting places.
"There are virtually no other places in our communities today that do this, especially not in rural areas.
"To lose them, to hamper our ability to renew and restore them, to diminish them, will cause irreparable damage not just to brick and stone, but to hearts and minds, because our church buildings matter, because the church matters, because community matters, and ultimately, because people and human flourishing matter.
"In a world where we too easily become too polarised, too separate from each other, and store up all these divisions, surely we should be strengthening those places which bring us together."
The Archbishop said that churches were doing what they could to pay for the maintenance of these often historic buildings, but said that the government’s scheme had been a “lifeline” for many churches, and asked the government to make it permanent, saying that many churches were “anxious” that the scheme might be discontinued.
