£495,000 awarded to kick start 23 local church housing projects

St John’s, Walthamstow hopes to build 14 flats for key workers

The Grants Committee of the Archbishops Council Housing Project met on July 4th to approve the first round of grants for church housing initiatives. Twenty four applications were submitted, and all bar one were approved, with an average grant of £21,500.

Applications came from around the country, with many from Birmingham diocese, where the Church Development Agency is supporting a number of projects. Other dioceses were Derby, Bristol, Gloucester, Truro, Rochester, Chelmsford, Lichfield, Blackburn and Oxford.  

Grants were mainly awarded for professional fees to examine the feasibility or viability of a church redevelopment project that prioritises the provision of affordable housing. Architects, surveyors, heritage and planning consultants, and project managers will help most of these projects get to the pre-app stage.  This is when provisional plans are taken to the local planning authority, who advise them on local policies and constraints ahead of submitting a formal planning application for a development.

Beki Winter, the Project Manager, said, "It's fantastic to see such strong applications coming through for the grants programme. We're excited to be sowing the seeds for projects that, over the coming years, will deliver hundreds of new homes on sites initiated and supported by parishes and dioceses. These homes will embody the five ‘S’ values set out in the Coming Home report – safe, stable, sociable, satisfying, and sustainable."

Parishes or dioceses applying to the grant programme have to state the benefits that they expect to accrue to the church and wider community from redevelopment; they also need to set out the risks involved, and where they think the finances would come from for the project.

Christchurch, Bexleyheath was awarded £25,000 for a project seeking to develop new affordable homes on land adjacent to the church building, which comprises the former rectory, community hall and open space.

The scheme would also involve the provision of a new church hall to replace the existing building that is in disrepair and is expected to be closed in the next few years. To improve the feasibility of the development, the church will explore the demolition of the former rectory, which is vacant and in disrepair to the point of being deemed unsafe.  The grant will be used to fund initial feasibility and site investigations to enable the project to move to the pre-app stage with the local authority.

Another grant of £23,160 was awarded for St Andrews, Barrow Hill in Derbyshire.

The project wants to develop affordable housing on the site of the now-closed St Andrew’s Church in Barrow Hill. The church, which closed in 2022 due to declining attendance and financial strain, is a locally listed building within a conservation area. The project is being led by Derby diocese, which takes over the management of closed church buildings from the PCC.  

The goal is to develop five new homes (3 two-bed, 2 three-bed), responding to the Council’s housing register having grown by 30% in two years. The project must first determine the true heritage value of the church and then explore the feasibility of converting the church building for residential use. If this option is unviable then full redevelopment of the site will be pursued.

This grant will fund essential feasibility work—planning advice, architectural design, heritage assessments, and a quantity surveyor to determine the viability of housing on the site. It would also fund pre-app fees with the Council.

Responding to the news, the lead Bishop for Housing, Rt Revd Guli Francis-Dehqani, declared, “This is an exciting and significant step forward for the Church, as more and more parishes and dioceses are thinking creatively about the land and buildings that God has entrusted to them. These small grants will enable PCCs to start turning burdensome buildings into a means of helping people who are in dire need of decent, affordable homes, and of strengthening their witness and service in the community.”

A second round of grant applications will open in September; for more information, please visit https://www.churchofengland.org/resources/housing-project#na