Places of Worship Renewal Fund

Baroness Prentis of Banbury Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Prentis of Banbury]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how the places of worship renewal fund will differ from the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme.

[Baroness Prentis of Banbury (Con)]

My Lords, the church of St James the Apostle has towered over the small village of Somerton, Oxfordshire, for almost 1,000 years. Last Saturday, our daughter Matilda and her new husband James were married there. The bells rang, the bridesmaids looked beautiful and the church was immaculate. It was a perfect setting for a happy day.

Our church plays an important part in village life. We have no shop or pub and precious little public transport. Around half the adult population, 87 of us, choose to sign up to be on the electoral roll. Most are not regular churchgoers, but every couple of months many of us attend events which range from traditional services to holiday clubs for children, from talks and fêtes to the annual Orthodox Theophany service in the week of Christian unity. Our nativity play, with a real baby, ponies, sheep and alpacas dressed as camels, is the talk of the valley and frankly makes “The Vicar of Dibley” look rather low-key.

This large church is a huge responsibility for a small village. It is grade 1 listed: 45% of grade 1 listed buildings in the country are places of worship. Every five years, we are given a list of repairs that must be carried out. We are currently worrying about how to pay for a repair to the roof, and we are not alone in that. Cleaning the church in the run-up to the wedding, I felt the care that had been lavished on our building for generations. I am very concerned that the actions of this Government mean that on our watch we may fail to preserve these buildings as we should.

The vast majority of the money needed for upkeep comes from individuals in the village. Apparently 89% of the population are unaware that, for most ordinary parish churches, there is no central fund for repairs. Our church relies mainly on a very few people giving monthly direct debits. Of course, in order to function as a church, we must also fund the contribution that pays our share of clergy costs, which in our case is £11,500 a year. All this from a congregation, on a normal Sunday, of around 10.

Money for mission rightly should come from churchgoers—I have no quarrel with that—but this debate is about how we support our most important listed buildings. The Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme allowed us to apply to reclaim the VAT costs on the cost of repairs, with a fairly straightforward application process. About 60% of all listed places of worship in the UK have used the scheme in the last 10 years. That is why previous Governments funded it with a stable budget of about £42 million. With that, we were not only preserving beautiful and important buildings but recognising the real value that churches provide to community life in the UK. Recent research by the National Churches Trust, using proper Treasury methodology, estimates that for every £1 spent on a church the benefit to the community is £16. It is worth remembering that the Church of England has to provide marriages and burials, and that there is historical value as well as civic value in these buildings. We are also, for example, the largest provider of art exhibition space in the country.

Despite all that, the Government decided drastically to cut the funding available to a fund of £23 million a year, which will not rise with inflation, and there is a new cap on all grants of £25,000. They announced that the scheme would end in April this year only for it to close early, meaning that eligible applicants lost out. After some time, when we were all in the lurch, with no information at all, we now, sadly, have details of the places of worship renewal fund. It is a very complex competitive grant scheme, with two application windows a year. Historic England, which has once again been put in charge of administering the scheme, has already warned of delays just for the earliest stage of the application. The scheme is limited to England only, with no provision for listed places of worship in the rest of the UK. To put the differences into perspective, it is estimated that the new scheme will probably support 100 to 150 listed places of worship a year. The previous scheme supported around 5,000.

The complexity of the application process is a real barrier. The fund is explicitly designed to target support in the most deprived areas of England, where need is highest. Consideration will also be given to communities with the least ability to raise funds locally. The scoring matrix has not been published, and I ask the Minister to give us further details on how rural deprivation in particular will be assessed. If necessary, I ask her to write to me about this, because details are really needed by the poor individuals in parishes around the country who are going to have to make the applications for the scheme.

I ask the Minister to think again. There is an argument that we should have a scheme such as this one for areas of highest deprivation, but please could we do it in conjunction with the previous scheme, which allowed us to claim back VAT costs? I am really pleased that the Conservative Party has committed to reinstate the much more generous scheme as it was before.

I thank noble Lords for their interest in this debate. I am sure that, in turn, they will all join me in thanking those who care for our listed places of worship: the Churches Conservation Trust, the Friends of Friendless Churches and, most of all, the individuals of all faiths and none who give their time and money to keep the roof on. The Government should not tax this worthy work, which is done on behalf of us all.