Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps Historic England are taking to reduce the number of places of worship on the Heritage at Risk Register.

Since 2009 Historic England has provided grants to enable churches and other religious denominations to employ support officers to advise, encourage and help local congregations to maintain and repair their places of worship and remove them from the Heritage at Risk Register. In 2022–23 the nine support officers in post directly supported 234 congregations and ran 22 training events, attended by 355 delegates, in addition to tailored training at individual places of worship.

Historic England architects, surveyors, engineers and technical advisers are also available to provide advice to help congregations address specific structural and repair problems across England. As a statutory consultee in both the national planning and ecclesiastical exemption processes, Historic England also provides formal advice on proposals for works to historic buildings, including informal advice pre-application and statutory responses in both legal frameworks. This expertise and assistance helps to remove places of worship from the Heritage at Risk Register.