The cost of urgent repairs to the UK's 47,000 places of worship is estimated to be around one billion pounds, according to the National Churches Trust. The Trust surveyed more than 7,200 volunteers or staff members responsible for the complex of buildings at a worship site. The report describes the UK's churches state of repair, revealing worrying trends in maintenance: 10% of churches are in urgent need of repair to roof, or rainwater disposal systems; of the churches in poor or very poor condition, only half are carrying out regular maintenance; and for all churches although 80% are maintaining their building regularly, only 13% do so in accordance with a formal schedule of planned maintenance.
In a statement the NCT commented on how some of this maintenance burden might be addressed:"What we would like to see in the coming years is a move towards more open discussion and partnership between organisations, and government schemes which support churches, chapels and meeting houses across the UK. We also remain grateful to the DCMS for continuing the LPOW Grant Scheme, albeit in a revised form this year." Later in the same statement they said "What must be borne in mind when we consider the total cost of urgent repairs for the UK’s buildings is that the majority of these costs, (up to an average of 85%) are met by the churches and their local communities themselves; through local fundraising and their own income. It is the work of organisations such as ourselves to offer support and advice to these communities, and to provide direct grants where suitable."
Church buildings play host to a rich ecology of activities through which the local community benefits. Around 40% of churches are using their buildings, which in this definition includes church halls, meeting rooms, and other associated buildings for non worship, mission related activities. 60% are opening them to the community either through events organised by church volunteers or through independent organisations. Urban churches are more likely to host independent organisations, while in rural settings community engagement appears to be led by volunteers associated with the building. As the number of volunteers a church has increases, so its use by the community increases. For all churches there is a tendency to favour uses which benefit the whole community, such as childcare groups and counselling services, as opposed to events for the benefit of private individuals.
Churches rely heavily on their volunteers, although 30% of churches use part time salaried staff such as specialist cleaners, or an administrator. Rural churches tend to have fewer volunteers than their urban counterparts. This may largely be a factor associate with church and population size but may also be related to differences in the profile of the population the church serves. 38% of rural churches have more than 20 volunteers and across all churches 60% have between 11 and 50 volunteers. Interestingly many churches have volunteers who are not part of the regular congregation. Across the whole sample 85% of volunteers were regular members of the congregation, meaning that around 200,000 people across the country regularly volunteer at their local church, even though they do not worship there.
Church buildings which have more volunteers are likely to be better maintained than those with fewer, although on average volunteers only spend 18% of their time repairing or cleaning the building. Of the remaining time 21% is devoted to community activities and 26% to faith based activities. Between 9 and 18% of churches in the sample had a 'Friends group' with 70% of these being in rural areas. These groups, like volunteers, clearly contribute substantially to the upkeep of church buildings and can connect large numbers of people to the church without the expectation that they should be joining the community in worship. The report is based on a survey which was predominantly carried out online, and generated around 9,000 responses of which, after weighting to ensure the sample was representative of the known numbers of churches across the UK as a whole, and discarding corrupt samples 7,200 remained.
Response bias means that there may have been a tendency for more active churches to be more likely to complete the survey, and there are no indications in the report that the degree of this bias has been estimated. For churches where there was little activity and few volunteers the survey's response bias means that churches may overall be in worse repair than the NCT suggest, leading to more urgent repairs and higher costs overall. Similarly there may be fewer volunteer hours being contributed, and less community activity occurring across the country than the survey suggests, but further research within the original 17,000 strong sample of churches would be required to ascertain the degree of bias.
In a statement the NCT said "Whilst we accept that, short of a 100% response rate, we cannot know the responses for every church building in the UK – we believe strongly that the UK-based estimates presented in the report are representative of the UK’s church building population. The methodology used for our analysis takes into account the factors we felt would most affect the level and type of response we would received, as detailed in the full report."
