Protecting the future of UK church buildings

The National Churches Trust (NCT) is a secular national charity whose remit is the maintenance of UK church buildings through grants, training and advocacy. Churches in the UK provide £55 billion of social benefit a year, through services such as foodbanks, elderly and youth groups and other forms of community support. The NCT is dedicated to keeping these buildings open and in good condition in order to ensure the ongoing provision of essential services.

The Chell Perkins team recently met with Jon Hodges, a project manager with the NCT. While the NCT is based in Westminster, the organisation also has regional offices, with one staff member in Wales, one in northwest England (where Jon is based), and two in Scotland.

Jon’s main project is Cherish: a three-year programme operating in Scotland, Wales and northwest England providing churches and places of worship with grants of between £500 and £10,000. The project was set up with a £1.9 million National Lottery Heritage Fund grant in 2023, and will run until autumn 2026.

Just as William Morris’s manifesto for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings urged guardians to ‘stave off decay by daily care’, the focus of the NCT, and the Cherish project, is the preventative maintenance of church buildings to protect them for the future, through tailored advice, training and funding.

As Jon explained, preventative maintenance is distinct from major repair projects in that it is proactive rather than reactive. There are several advantages to this approach, including saving money, promoting guardianship, engaging local communities (religious or otherwise) and advancing sustainability or net-zero goals. Large-scale projects, such as an entire roof replacement, are harder for churches to fund, but smaller ones are more feasible. The Cherish project has distributed approximately £900,000 in small grants for repairs and development.

Maintenance of church buildings has always been crucial, but it is especially important at the present time due to climate change, which is leading to an increase in peak rainfall and more frequent extreme weather events, which in turn leads to structural damage. Likewise, the fact that churches tend to have smaller congregations today means there is less finance immediately available to them to cover necessary renovations.

While it is relatively easy for churches to obtain funds for mission or ministry projects, if their toilets or central heating don’t work, then those projects cannot go ahead – hence the importance of the NCT’s maintenance grants. Jon outlined the resources and support that the NCT provides: funding, advice (in the form of videos and templates – their maintenance plan template is especially helpful), training, a funding database and a skills directory.

The final deadline for the NCT’s Cherish project grants has now passed. But their local Support Officers are still on hand to help your place of worship. You can also still apply for grant funding through the NCT’s Large and Medium grant programmes.

To learn more how the NCT can help you visit: https://www.nationalchurchestrust.org/get-support/grants