HISTORIC RELIGIOUS BUILDINGS ALLIANCE

GENERAL MEMBERS MEETING – MINUTES

WEDNESDAY4th DECEMBER 2013

Held between 2pm 4.30pm in Room 1, Church House, Great Smith Street,Westminster SW1

Attendees

Trevor Cooper (TC), Chair, HRBA

Becky Payne, (BP) Development Officer, HRBA

Revd Graham Jones (GJ), National Rural Officer for the MethodistChurch and the United Reformed Church

Diana Evans (DE), Head of Places of Worship Advice English Heritage

Mike Fitzgerald

Frank Cranmer (FC), Secretary, Churches' Legislation Advisory Service (CLAS)

Alan Taylor

Donna McDonald (DM)

Geoffrey Hunter (GH), Head of Parish Property Support, Diocese of London

Matthew Cooper (MC), Church Maintenance Support Officer, Diocese of London

Sarah King (SK), Co-ordinator, Association of English Cathedrals

Crispin Truman (CT), Chief Executive, the Churches Conservation Trust

Stella Jackson (SJ), Regional Project Officer (Lincolnshire), SPAB Maintenance Co-operatives Project

Ruth Knight (RK), Environmental Policy Officer, Cathedral and Church Buildings Division (CCBD), Church of England

Charlotte Dodgeon (CD), Programme Manager for Places of Worship and Townscapes, Heritage Lottery Fund

Graham Collings (GC), Independent Fund-raising consultant

Gerry Prosser (GP), Listed Buildings Advisory Group, United Reformed Church

Caroline Egerton (CE), Director and Trustee of Norfolk Churches Trust

Alan Taylor (AT)

Elizabeth Simon (ES)

Nigel Robb (NR), Associate Secretary, Worship, Doctrine, Art and Architecture, Church of Scotland

Jo Hibbard (JH), Methodist Heritage, the MethodistChurch

Matthew Seward (MS), Deputy Chief Executive, National Churches Trust

Roland Jeffery (RJ), Director, Historic Chapels Trust

Guests

Tom Ashley, Conservation Adviser for places of worship in England and Wales, The Victorian Society

Apologies

Caroline Rawlings, Assistant DAC Secretary and Bishop's Furnishing Officer, Diocese of Norwich

Canon John Brown, Chair of the Churches Visitors and Tourism Association

Sophie Andreae, Vice Chairman, Patrimony Committee, the Catholic Church in England and Wales

Alex Glanville, Head of Property, Church in Wales

Jennie Hawks

Edwina Proudfoot, Chairman, Scottish Church Heritage Research Ltd

Kate Pugh, Chief Executive, the Heritage Alliance

John Mills, Chair of the CountyTrusts Forum

Janet Gough, Director of the Cathedral and Church Buildings Council, Church of England

Dr Sharman Kadish, Director of Jewish Heritage

Sabrina Harcourt-Smith (SH)

Mobeen Butt, Project Leader, Islam in British Stone or Curator - MuslimMuseum Initiative

Joanne Balmforth, Conservation Officer, the MethodistChurch

Andrew Mottram, HeritageBuildings & Community Development Officer, The Diocese of Worcester

Matthew Saunders, Hon Sec, Friends of Friendless Churches

  1. Welcome and Introductions

Trevor Cooper, Chair welcomed everyone and introductions were made.

  1. Internal Matters
  2. BP recorded the election of the HRBA Steering Group for 2013-14 at the HRBA Open Day meeting on 13th September 2013.
  3. BP reported that the Big Update, HRBA’s Open Dayon 13th September 2013 was well attended and those attending heard from 8 expert speakers on a range of topics.

It was agreed that the format of 15-20mins talks followed by time for questions and discussion and the opportunities to speak to the speakers throughout the day was very effective.

TC explained that he and BP proposed moving the Open Day from September to December. The reason is that when the event takes place in early September, the necessary advertising and promotion has to take place during the summer months when people are away. This means that take-up is slow and only builds up in the prior three weeks which makes planning difficult.

Action: Agreed that the 2014 Open Day/Big Update will take place in December.

2.3TC reported back on the second Training Day on ManagingSignificantBuilding Projects in

Places of Worship held on 8th October at the New Room, Bristol. Over 60 people attended ranging from architects to vicars and churchwardens and feedback has been very positive.

Action: HRBA and PurcellUK are now discussing organizing a third day possibly in the Peterborough area in late spring or early summer next year.

2.4 DE reported back on the Tourism and Places of Worship Workshop held on 28th October 2013. This had been organized by English Heritage with help from the David Knight of the Church Buildings Council. The aim was to bring together all the players involved in church tourism to exchange knowledge, share experience and consider how to use limited resources co-operatively and effectively. The priority was to include the secular and commercial tourism agencies as well as DCMS and VisitEngland.

The Cathedral and Church Buildings Division (CCB, CofE) held a tourism fringe meeting at the November Synod and are planning a number of follow up events in 2014 combined with developing better website guidance. This work will be alongside others in the field and aims to contribute to a wider sector strategy.

Discussion on this item included the following points:

  • There is a huge amount of projects and initiatives already happening, which needs to be learnt from, built on and joined up.
  • Any strategy needs to include Wales and Scotland as they have achieved a lot we can learn from eg: Wales recent Welsh Assembly backed Faith Tourism Strategy and Action Plan.
  • JH reported that Methodist Heritage is now looking to work with tourism companies to see if tours can be organized for those groups – domestic and from abroad - who want to visit all the important Methodist Heritage sites in one go.

Action: Any further comments to be addressed to RK and DE.

  1. Policy matters

Short presentations were given as follows:

3.1Revd Graham Jones (GJ), National Rural Officer for the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church spoke on Small is Beautiful and Rising to the Challenge: Rural Churches and the next Five Years

GJ began by saying there were very real challenges facing rural churches.One challenge is around theology and thinking about what it means to be church in today’s rural context. Church buildings are the most immediate reflection of our theology and the different roles being played by rural churches today can create tensions.

The increase in interest and subsequent pressure on rural churches to engage with their local communities can create tension around sharing community space with sacred space.

Another challenge is about how we make our buildings and Christian presence sustainable and where the capacity to do this is going to come from.

The MethodistChurch and the United Reformed Church have set up a Joint Property Strategy group which is looking at three themes: people, possibilities and partnerships as follows:

  • People: the two challenges here are declining numbers in congregations and leadership. Most ministers are now looking after multiple churches, but are still trying to work using the same model as applied when looking after one church.

The solutions are a combination of empowering the laity and a different model for ministers. The Arthur Rank Centre (ARC) is currently running training in creative enterprises and leadership.

  • Possibilities: the challenge here is to encourage new visions of church for people who have probably only known a church in decline.

Recent surveys which have reported on the 5 most valued elements within rural life always list pub, school, shop/post office and the village church.

The recommendation is for churches to aim to do one or two things well, rather than trying to do everything.

  • Partnerships: the challenge here is to raise the profile of the contribution that people of faith make to their communities. This was highlighted in ARC research undertaken with the University of Coventry a few years ago. This recommended that churches should relate to partners more openly and trustingly. There are plenty of significant partners with whom we are already working with including ACRE, Plunkett Foundation, CAB, Credit Unions, and Post Office Ltd.

GJ ended by saying there are plenty of good news stories out there illustrating creative thinking. The ARC aims to help and support and provide rural places of worship who want to do more. Two specific resources are:

  • The Equipping for Rural Mission Toolkit which can be downloaded here
  • Resources for Rural Church Buildings which covers all aspects of looking after and developing a rural place of worship and can be downloaded here

In the subsequent discussion, the following points were made:

  • There are both positive and negative aspects of empowering the laity
  • There is a mismatch between what clergy are trained for and what they have to do once they are placed in a parish. They become ministers to ‘do church’, but get bogged-down in managing a church building.
  • There is a need for new mission models.
  • There needs to be a better mechanism developed for sharing good models/best practice on managing new projects in places of worship covering physical changes to the buildings as well as developing extended uses and working with new partners.
  • All the issues discussed also apply to urban churches especially those in the inner city.

3.2 Tom Ashley (TA), Conservation Adviser for places of worship in England and Wales, the Victorian Society spoke about the role of the Victorian Society in respect of places of worship and current issues

TA began by saying that what he had to say would also be relevant to the other Amenity Societies.

The stated purposes of the Victorian Society (VS) which is the champion for Victorian and Edwardian buildings in England and Wales are to (taken from the Vic Soc website):

  • to save Victorian and Edwardian buildings or groups of buildings of special architectural merit from needless destruction or disfigurement.
  • to awaken public interest in, and appreciation of, the best of Victorian and Edwardian arts, architecture, crafts and design;
  • to encourage the study of these and of related social history and to provide advice to owners and public authorities in regard to the preservation and repair of Victorian and Edwardian buildings and the uses to which they can, if necessary, be adapted

This translates to 2/3s of the Society's remit being about being enthusiastic about and helpful to those responsible for buildings and 1/3 about intervening to save buildings under threat, though it is that last third that takes up most of our time and attracts the most attention.

The perception is that the VS always say ‘NO’ whereas in fact, it is an organization which aims to provide expert knowledge to support and advise places of worship to reach the best solution when making changes to their building.

TA explained that as 90% of church case work involves Church of England buildings, he would talk mostly about the Faculty Jurisdiction System.

TA explained the consultation process. Generally, the VS is consulted before an application gets to the Chancellor. If it reaches the Chancellor with a VS objection outstanding, then on occasions, the Vic Soc will decide to take that case to a Consistory Court. Last year, they objected to only one in five ie: 100 out of 500 applications. They asked to be party opponents to one in a hundred. Only one got as far as a Consistory Court.

Currently statutory amenity societies are meant to be consulted at the same time as advice is sought from the DAC. From 1st January, the advice will be that amenity societies should be consulted before the DAC. It remains to be seen how this will work in practice.

TA explained that the VS face two main problems when dealing with applications:

1)Too many consultations take place when a scheme is a long way down the road and a lot of time and money has already been invested in a project which means a church is not interested in negotiation. The VS is working to improve this.

2)The quality of documentation provided varies considerably across dioceses. This is especially true of Statements of Need and Significance where the quality can be very poor and certainly not up to the standard that would be expected under the secular planning system. There is good advice on the Churchcare website, but too many applicants including those responsible for grade I churches ignore it.

Common problems include:

  • the Statement of Significanceappears to have just been lifted from the listing description.
  • It is clear that many are produced after a decision has been made as to which part of the church needs to be altered and this obviously affects the objectivity of the Statements.
  • insufficient detail is provided and the need for four toilets and a full kitchen as opposed to one fully accessible toilet and a server is not explained

The VS can make three types of response:

  • no objections
  • advice without objections
  • objections

The VS is aware that it needs to review their letters in view of feedback which says that they are seen as ‘high-handed’, ‘hostile’ and ‘too technical’. TA explained that they are written ‘to speak’ to PCCs, but also DACs and architects. It is important to set out any objections in detail at the earliest opportunity in case it ends up at a Consistory Court.

TA said that the VS gets the most flak because it is largely the C19th fabric and fixture and fittings which are affected by current changes. Furthermore, it is also a view that Victorian church interiors are ubiquitous which creates a difficulty when trying to explain to a PCC that they have something special. Churches also resent the intrusion and see it as interference by a body with no status.

The issues have remained constant over the last few year largely arising out of the wish to improve the comfort levels within our churches and increase flexibility for new forms of worship and wider uses. Issues include:

  • The wholesale reordering which often includes the removal of all pews rarely involves a survey of the pews to ascertain their importance and intrinsic quality. The VS does not without question try to save all the pews, but rather questions whether they all need to go and/or they can be made moveable.
  • Some churches think that if they agree to keep the chancel intact, this will mean they can get agreement to move more pews/make major changes
  • The desire for upholstered furniture which in fact does not wear well and means long term repair costs.
  • Underfloor heating is not always economical and can often involve losing an historic floor which is replaced by one of lesser quality.
  • The wish for carpeting which is generally opposed as can create too much of a domestic feel.
  • Glass doors are seen as removing the barrier that a solid door can be to people coming into a church, but this is not always true especially in rural areas where a welcome sign can just as easily encourage people to enter.
  • Sub-division of a church interior in order to create separate meeting spaces can mean the loss of the architectural space; glass screens are not as invisible as people think.
  • Applications are made to remove the rood screen to improve the visibility for congregations. The VS tries to encourage the use of the chancel for smaller services.
  • PCC want to move the font into a more prominent position, but this can destroy the sense of a baptismal area. The VS also questions the wish to remove the font from its plinth as this can often lessen the grandeur of the sculpture as a whole.

In conclusion, TA said that all of the above can be very emotive and contentious. He re-emphasised that the VS does not always say ‘no’, but wants to be supportive and help parishes to make their church work for them.

They are considering producing a booklet of good examples which churches can refer to - not to reproduce, but to learn from when considering changes to their own buildings.

In the subsequent discussion, the following points were made:

  • Cost can be an issue for parishes when deciding upon changes. There needs to be more recognition that high standards of design and use of quality materials does cost more.
  • The VS would like to make more site visits and some DACs do help with this by arranging 4 or more visits on one day.
  • Suggestion that along with their letters, the VS could include a short paragraph or even a separate leaflet explaining their role and providing statistics to show how few objections they do actually make.

3.3 Diana Evans (DE), Head of Places of Worship Advice, English Heritage spoke about Places of Worship at Risk 2013; what the statistics do and don't tell us'.

DE explained that the Heritage at Risk programme has been going for some years. It includes all elements of the heritage asset and places of worship of all grades, nationally, since 2010, although London region included them for a number of years before that. The criteria for inclusion is that a building is identified as being in bad or very poor condition.

The criteria for places of worship is the same as for the HLF grant programme for places of worship, namely urgent repairs required to the envelope of the building.

In 2009 a survey was undertaken of 2,000 places of worship chosen to reflect known proportions of listing, denomination, location. It found that 11% were in poor or very bad condition.