Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bradley Thomas and Marsha De Cordova

Thursday 28th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Marsha De Cordova]

Hospices and palliative care play an important role in end of life care. I believe that we need to fund those services properly before we consider moving towards legislating for assisted dying.

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

2. What steps the Church is taking to preserve historic places of worship.

[Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)]

4. What progress the Church Commissioners have made on reducing the backlog of works to restore parish churches and cathedrals.

[Marsha De Cordova]

The national Church institutions have invested £11 million in the Buildings for Mission fund, which provides money for repairs, specialist advice and grants to parishes of up to £12,000 for small-scale urgent work. Buildings for Mission can also be used to pay for essential improvements to church missions and ministries, such disability access, toilets or even a community kitchen.

[Bradley Thomas]

My constituency is home to many historic churches that continue to be much loved by their communities. They include St John’s church in Bromsgrove, which dates from 12th century but was predominantly constructed in the 14th and 15th centuries. The church has had to raise many hundreds of thousands of pounds for the upkeep and maintenance of its spire. Key to that is the listed places of worship grant scheme. What conversations have taken place between the Government and the Church regarding the preservation of that scheme?

[Marsha De Cordova]

St John’s church in Bromsgrove is a perfect example because, having raised the funds, it is preparing to undertake urgent work to its spire, with an anticipated project cost of roughly £452,000, but it could reclaim around £90,000 through the listed places of worship grant. As the hon. Gentleman probably knows, the scheme has paid out £317 million since it was introduced in 2001 by the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and has assisted over 13,000 places. The scheme currently receives around 7,000 applications per annum and has a budget of £42 million. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has assessed the scheme on numerous occasions. It delivers the fairest possible system of making grants.