State help funding public buildings could include Church buildings

Those of you outside of Britain may not be aware of one of the difficulties that many churches have where their buildings are very old and 'heritagey'. Basically, they may not be an areas where there is sufficient population or means to meet well the expenses that the maintenance and development of ancient buildings requires. Yet this presents a difficulty: the building is normally regarded as something of a community resource and is the focus of interest by historical societies and heritage groups. So the church's room for manoeuvre is considerably restricted; they can't do with the building what they may want. It's a bad situation sometimes: they are expected to pay for things and to maintain a building which they are not allowed to control and the emotional and community relations aspects of giving the building up are very hard to contemplate. So there is some sense of natural justice when the wider community, in the form of government, offers some help ... Church Times - ‘No more squeamishness’ says funding report: "The Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Richard Chartres, who was involved in drawing up the report, said on Tuesday: “This report is an unequiv�ocal sign from Government that it’s in�appropriate to be prejudiced against applications which are clearly related to that very important dimen�sion of church buildings, which is their use as community hubs.

“There’s nothing controversial about providing kitchen and lavatory facilities for a wide cross-section of society."

The bishop points out that some churches in rural areas are becoming used to provide community facilities such as post office facilities, for example.