The National Lottery Heritage Fund awards nearly £5 million for conservation in Church of England parishes

The National Lottery Heritage Fund has announced £4.68 million to support the Church of England’s Conservation Grants Scheme over the next five years, helping churches to preserve a range of features from stained glass windows to paintings, clocks, bells, organs and monuments.

The award, which rises to £5.5 million in value with match funding, will enable the scheme also to fund grants for church fabric repairs of up to £25,000 that are linked to the conservation of an object – such as mending guttering if a leak is affecting wall paintings.

Other new features include funding for partnerships with training institutions – helping with significant costs such as scaffolding - in order to allow churches to act as training sites for skilled crafts in areas such as stained glass, monuments and wall paintings.

The expanded scheme will not only give larger grants to more projects, but will include funding for specialist surveys and help existing conservation projects reach completion.

The award is the first to be made through The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s new strategic initiative for Places of Worship. Through the initiative at least £15million will be invested for strategic projects at a national and regional level to address sector-wide issues and funding gaps facing the UK’s places of worship.

A further £85 million is expected to be awarded through The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s National Lottery Grants for Heritage programme over the next three years, with any place of worship in the UK, of any religion or denomination, encouraged to apply.

Eilish McGuinness, Chief Executive of The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: “Places of worship are some of the UK’s most historic buildings often at the heart of communities.

"There are many challenges facing these places, some new and others long-standing.

"The Heritage Fund has launched a new three-year strategy for places of worship which commits us to working with everyone concerned about their future to ensure that they are valued, cared for and sustained for everyone.

“We are delighted to be supporting the Church of England’s conservation grants scheme and we are looking forward to working with other organisations across the UK to develop their own strategic interventions for places of worship of all denominations to tackle the problems they face.”

The Bishop of Ramsbury, Andrew Rumsey, who is the Church of England's joint lead bishop for church buildings, said: "This is tremendous news, and will be such an encouragement to all who care for our church buildings. I applaud the vision and generosity of the Heritage Fund in committing to the future of these extraordinary places of worship, wonder and service.”

Emily Gee, the Church of England's Director of Cathedrals and church buildings, said: "We are hugely grateful to the Heritage Fund for this extraordinarily generous and much-needed award for church buildings.

"It will enable us to expand our support to parishes in their crucial work to preserve our treasured cultural heritage, including the conservation of stained glass, wall paintings, clocks, bells, paintings and monuments.

“It will also provide a programme to enable churches to partner with educational institutions in the training of a new generation of heritage craft skill specialists, who are vital to the ongoing preservation of this diverse and rich heritage.

"I would like to pay tribute and thank all the thousands of dedicated volunteers who work so hard and give their time to ensuring that the heritage of our church buildings, so cherished by our communities, is sustained into the future.

“We are also deeply grateful to those funders, particularly the Pilgrim Trust, and the Radcliffe Trust, who have supported this programme over so many years and established this remarkable programme for churches and their communities."

Details of how to apply to the scheme will be announced later this year. For further enquiries please contact the Church of England's buildings team.